I’m back, and I hope everyone had a great Canada Day/Independence Day weekend. Things have been a little odd these few weeks and I’m currently working on updating a few blog posts I’ve made and waiting for some items to arrive. So more reviews to come! Now, let’s sit down and chat!
Edit: This post was originally scheduled to be published on July 8th, unfortunately, due to the great Rogers Outage Canada had that day, I was not able to publish this.
In the weeks between June and July, things were a little weird (I’ll explain at the end) and I had a bit of a weird lull between creating content and writing my next blog post. It also didn’t help that I ended up working the entire long weekend/Canada Day weekend, so I took a bit of time for (by scheduling my blog posts) myself to start on some hobbies and etc.
Some of these hobbies I’ve been interested in before or were totally new to me, so I hope that by doing this you could discover a new hobby for you to try. I’ll also be labelling if I think that the hobby is wallet-friendly or not, because not all hobbies are friendly to the wallet. You’ll probably be surprised or not surprised depending on how familiar you are with them.
Please use the table of contents to navigate which section you’re interested in, it’s gonna be a long one.
Stationery, Fountain Pens & Stickers
First of all, that spelling is correct, I swear! There is a variation spelled “stationary” which is “to stand still in one place”. The variation with an ‘e’ is related to all things paper, pens and etc. Stationery has been something that I fixated on when I was younger. It started with Sailor Moon or Hello Kitty pens and pencils and has now upgraded to Fountain Pens to start.
I used to hand write my own short stories or fan fiction (nothing bad I swear!) and I always dreamed of doing that with a fountain pen one day. Back then, I always saw $50+ fountain pens and kind of forgot about them because of the price point. Recently, one of my best friends and I discovered that we both enjoyed fountain pens and we both ended up getting them. She got hers (a reputable brand) from Amazon and I got mine through a store called Wonder Pens.
I really wished that I had found them sooner because this place would be heaven to 12-year-old me. The pen isn’t too expensive unless you plan to get a converter to use bottled ink, and it would also depend on what brand you’re getting too. There are so many factors! The store also has a great washi tape section and it literally took all my self-control to only buy one. It’s book themed of course. I’ll probably have a more in-depth post about this one day so as to not bore anyone here.
Finally, stickers! Who doesn’t love them? I mainly use them when I write pen pal letters to my friend, so they are technically going somewhere, but other than that I’m really trying hard to not haul home a lot of stickers. I get them from both Aliexpress (if I’m looking for something specific) and from Etsy, if I’m looking for a bunch of random ones. They both have great options but price kind of pays a factor in it too.
So yeah, collection stationery and etc. has become a recent hobby of mine that doesn’t necessarily break the bank if you’re smart about where to look. However, the price for fountain pens can add up if you’re looking for something very specific.
Keyboards
Another new hobby is related to keyboards! When I finally got a computer and learned about Wattpad in middle school, I was obsessed with writing my short stories and putting them online. I actually still have a few of the super old ones on there. . . Anyways, by this point, I had mostly forgotten about Fountain Pens back then and grew fixated on typewriters. I know that my dad used one when he was in Malaysia’s refugee camp, and I fell in love with the idea of them.
I knew it was probably unlikely to be able to afford and maintain a working typewriter so I settled with buying a typewriter-like keyboard. I got two versions after I left high school, one has rounded keys and the other greatly resembles a typewriter (even the noise) but with backlighted keys. I don’t remember what happened but that second keyboard somehow ended up spiralling me down the path of mechanical keyboards, and the world of customizable keyboards.
Keyboards themselves are not a wallet-friendly hobby, but the mechanical keyboard hobby is even worse. Think $200+ give or take $100. I kind of cheated when I put together my keyboard, but the total is about $150 for the keyboard, switches and new keycaps. I also ended up pre-ordering another set of keycaps that I’d been eyeing, and that was another $200 that I saved for something else, but never got (it was the Nintendo Switch I mentioned last year).
So yeah, definitely not a wallet-friendly hobby but it’s pretty satisfying.
Reading
Not a big surprise that it’s a hobby that I’m still rediscovering. I have a couple of books that I just preordered too so I can’t wait for those. I’m going through a weird binge right now re-reading Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood, and also listening to regency romance audiobooks. But I’ve also been eyeing some monster thrillers, so I guess my reading appetite is back from a brief break.
I think I’m technically classified as a serial reader, someone who constantly reads and gravitates towards reading shorter stories/ebooks. I’m almost always reading, and I can finish a book and start another on the same day. I struggle with longer books (think print length) unless they are a physical book I’m reading and I tend to prefer the audiobook version to even longer books.
Nails/Nail Art
I used to really be into nail art when I was younger, so much so that I had thought that I’d go into the esthetician career when I was in high school. I had to put the hobby aside while I was in the Animal Care program (cannot have long nails, and polish of any kind was a little sketchy when you got deeper throughout the program so…) and I had moments where I missed nail art so much I bought fake nails to just use as a creative outlet.
After leaving my old program, the first thing I did was get my nails done at a salon – a first for me – and it was an alright price but not something I’d do long term. I went a second time afterwards and then ended up just buying the materials to do my nails at home. I’ve been buying most of them from Jessica’s Nail and Beauty Supply since I live close to them, and I’ve also been looking at some stores that carry Korean Gel Polish.
Anyways, that’s what I’ve been up to lately. What about you guys? Any hobbies?
The last weeks of June have been weird and just proved to me that while good things can happen in 2022, there were some inevitable things that happened too, that made this year not the greatest. As some of you may (or may not know) I had two pet rabbits that I raised since I was 16 or so, around the time that I started this blog too, actually. Around Christmas 2021, Winter -one of the rabbits- passed away suddenly and it really hit me hard. Afterwards, I started to worry about Ash because they were a bonded pair and he did not like other rabbits.
But other than being a little “down” for a couple of weeks Ash bounced back. Unfortunately, his health took a turn for the worse in June and he passed near the end of the month. Some of the blog posts in June were planned in advance to allow for me to have time with him, to grieve and kind of heal as well. I haven’t been active on social media during this time so I thought it’d be best to clear things up here.
