Why is it that…

… I always seem to pick the expensive hobbies? Seriously. Sailing, skiing and shooting are the three primary sports in which I participate. None of these sports come cheap – both in terms of costs associated with purchasing boats/skis/guns, but in actually doing the sport – you need to pay for mooring and fuel costs for boats, you have to pay for flights and accommodation when you go skiing and you have to pay for cartridges and other costs when shooting.

I’ve recently taken up photography as a new hobby – if one shoots with a digital camera, the cost of a new camera is more often than not over £500 for a half-decent one. Let’s not even think about the lenses, which can easily sell for multiple hundreds of pounds for relatively “basic” models, and over £1000 for the “pro” models. If one shoots film, one has to pay for film and development costs. These all add up in a big way (not to mention the cost of the high-end film cameras – especially MF (Medium-Format) cameras).

One “hobby” I’ve been involved in since a really young age is reading. Okay, so at first glance reading isn’t that expensive. But when you’re finishing a £6-8 novel every other day or so (as I tend to do during the holiday season when I attempt to take a break from computers), it gets really fucking expensive. Since coming back from Aberystwyth on the 19th July (less than two weeks ago), I’ve read £73.91 worth of books. That’s almost three quarters of a hundred pounds. My wallet is crying (as is my bank account). It doesn’t help that I have another £49.95 worth of books on order… And that’s for five books alone.

I think my main issue is the fact that I like to buy my own physical books. And I like them to be new. This leads to two major problems:

  1. I can’t buy books second-hand (well, I can. I just don’t want to and would probably refuse to do so)
  2. I can’t borrow books from the library (see above)
  3. I can’t read eBooks (they “feel” wrong)

Buggeration. Anyone want to recommend some cheaper hobbies for me? Pretty please?

On a side note, I’m starting the Infinite Summer project when my copy of the book arrives tomorrow (albeit about a month and a bit behind schedule), Infinite Jest is apparently about 1000 pages long and relatively difficult to read. Hopefully this means I’ll put buying new books on the backburner for a wee while – especially as I’ll have another 3 books to finish after it.

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Published:
8.4.09 / 8pm
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