Hobbies and Friendships - How They’re Connected
In these days of high stress, financial and otherwise, we all have our favorite ways of enjoying ourselves. We all have our favorite hobbies. For some of us it’s watching T.V. - sports, entertainment shows, reality shows, and so on. And for others, it’s doing some sort of activity such as going about writing a fiction book, photography, running, or even bird watching.
It probably goes without saying that it’s almost always more fun to share your hobby with a friend than to do it alone For example, even a solitary activity such as running, is more enjoyable when doing it with a friend. And some hobbies, such as tennis, pretty much require that two or more people be involved.
The problem is that since the early part of the 20th century, we have gradually moved away from each other. Childhood friends now live on different coasts. Family members often only get together on holidays because everyone lives so far from each other.
Everything together makes finding those who enjoy the same interests harder to find.
But then the Internet came along. And, conversely from keeping people apart from each other, as many social observers once feared, the Internet has instead become a great resource to bring persons of similar interests together. Over the past 8 years, literally thousands of forums have sprung up over the Internet, started by people with an interest or hobby that they loved and showing their members steps to writing a book. And in the course of starting their forum, most of them discovered that they were not alone in their love of that topic.
But furthermore, in what has probably surprised many people, their common interest in their hobby has spilled over and continued into the real world and created authentic off-line friendships. Friendships that in the past would have happened because they would have never met.
This probably just goes to prove how much of a communal animal that man really is and how much we all need each other to make life worth living.
Chris Edwards is webmaster and writer for author related subjects such as writing children book.