Your energy is limited. Your interests don’t have to be.
Hobbies are supposed to give us something back, but finding one can be surprisingly difficult when energy, concentration, mobility, or even the amount of setup involved changes from day to day.
This quiz helps narrow down hobbies based on the energy, focus, movement, and setup you actually have room for, plus what sounds enjoyable enough to be worth starting.
Results
You want immersion and interaction without a lot of physical effort, setup, or cleanup. You like having somewhere to go and something to do, even when going anywhere in real life sounds profoundly unappealing.
And “cozy” doesn’t have to describe the genre. Sometimes your cozy game has farming, decorating, and friendly villagers. Sometimes it’s an RPG you’ve played five times, an MMO where you know every road, or a bleak fantasy world full of creatures trying to murder you. Comfort is personal.
Gaming is especially flexible because you can match what you play to the brainpower you have available. Explore. Decorate. Level something. Replay an old favorite. Organize an inventory. Take screenshots. Follow a story. Or wander around accomplishing absolutely nothing.
You might enjoy: cozy and life sims, familiar comfort games, exploration games, turn-based RPGs, MMOs, visual novels, building and decorating games, or anything that lets you choose your own pace.
Try it tonight: Open a game you already own and choose the least demanding thing in it that you genuinely enjoy doing. Wandering around counts.
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I write about gaming, hobbies, creativity, chronic illness, and finding things worth enjoying when your energy is limited.
You want somewhere for your mind to go without needing to interact with every second of the experience. A story, voice, or interesting idea can carry some of the weight for you.
Reading also has more difficulty settings than we tend to give it credit for. A novel when concentration is cooperating. Comics, manga, short stories, or fanfiction when it isn’t. An audiobook when looking at words sounds like an unreasonable administrative demand.
This is a particularly good fit if you enjoy immersion but don’t always want objectives, decisions, supplies, or something to show for the time you spent.
You might enjoy: novels, audiobooks, comics and manga, short stories, fanfiction, essays, narrative podcasts, or casually browsing whatever catches your attention.
Try it tonight: Pick something you actually want to read or hear and give it ten minutes. No reading goal. No challenge. You are allowed to stop halfway through a chapter.
Want more things to do between battles?
Between Battles is about games, hobbies, creativity, chronic illness, and making room for enjoyable things when energy isn’t unlimited.
You want the satisfaction of making something visual, but you probably don’t need another elaborate project hanging over your head.
Creativity can be much smaller than we make it. A pencil and whatever paper is nearby count. So does coloring, doodling on a tablet, making a collage, sketching a game character, drawing an interesting object, or spending far too long designing one extremely important fictional sword.
You don’t need expensive supplies, a recognizable style, or anything worth posting afterward. The making can be the entire point.
You might enjoy: doodling, coloring, sketching, digital art, collage, character art, drawing game items, simple design projects, or tiny creative experiments you can finish in one sitting.
Try it tonight: Pick one thing you like and draw it badly on purpose. It is surprisingly effective at killing the pressure to make something “good.”
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I write about gaming, creativity, hobbies, chronic illness, and keeping the things you enjoy in your life without turning all of them into work.
You want somewhere to put your thoughts, ideas, observations, or imaginary worlds.
That doesn’t mean you need to become a Serious Journal Person who faithfully documents every morning and owns twelve identical beige notebooks.
Write tiny reviews. Keep strange facts. Make lists. Record dreams. Invent characters. Build fictional worlds. Write fanfiction. Keep a commonplace book. Take notes about games you’re playing. Write three sentences of a story and abandon it for six months. Complain about one game mechanic for 600 words.
Writing is allowed to be fragmented, private, unfinished, and completely useless to anyone except you.
You might enjoy: casual journaling, creative writing, fanfiction, worldbuilding, commonplace books, blogging, tiny reviews, themed notebooks, or keeping lists about things you love.
Try it tonight: Write five things currently occupying space in your brain. Don’t explain any of them unless you want to.
Want more things to do between battles?
Between Battles is about gaming, hobbies, creativity, chronic illness, and finding ways to keep making a life when your available energy keeps changing.
You want a hobby that gives you a reason to look outward and notice what’s around you.
Photography can turn a short walk, your backyard, a window, a thrift store, or even your own room into somewhere worth investigating. Light. Weather. Plants. Architecture. Textures. Shadows. Strange little objects. Things everyone else walked past.
And “wandering” doesn’t have to mean going on an expedition. Five minutes outside counts. So does photographing something from your window. So does virtual photography inside a game on a day when leaving home isn’t happening.
You don’t need a proper camera, either. Your phone is already enough.
You might enjoy: phone photography, nature photography, cloud spotting, neighborhood photo walks, thrift-store details, macro photography, game photography, or tiny visual scavenger hunts.
Try it tonight: Find five interesting things without going farther than your energy allows. Photograph them simply because you noticed them.
Want more things to do between battles?
I write about gaming, hobbies, creativity, nature, chronic illness, and small ways of staying interested in the world around us.
You want something to solve.
Not necessarily something productive. Not something that becomes a six-month undertaking. Just a problem interesting enough to give your brain somewhere specific to point itself for a while.
Puzzles are wonderfully adjustable that way. Five-minute word game? Counts. Giant jigsaw permanently occupying a table? Also counts. Puzzle video game? Absolutely counts.
The common thread is the little moment of satisfaction when something finally clicks.
You might enjoy: crosswords, Sudoku, jigsaws, logic puzzles, word games, riddles, escape-room games, puzzle video games, or daily brain games.
Try it tonight: Pick one puzzle that you can finish, pause, or abandon within twenty minutes.
The puzzle works for you. You do not work for the puzzle.
Want more things to do between battles?
Between Battles is about gaming, hobbies, creativity, chronic illness, and keeping life interesting without making every enjoyable thing another obligation.
You don’t necessarily want to make something or solve something.
You want to know something you didn’t know before.
That is a hobby.
Follow folklore. Astronomy. Geology. Game lore. Medieval clothing. Architecture. Historical recipes. Volcanoes. Vampires. Ancient disasters. Strange animals. Local history. Start with one innocent question and emerge later with seventeen tabs open and a suspicious amount of knowledge about 14th-century funerary practices.
There is no exam afterward. You don’t need to monetize your new knowledge, turn it into a project, or justify why you wanted to know.
You might enjoy: documentaries, video essays, virtual museums, history and folklore, game lore, online lectures, deep dives, Wikipedia wandering, or wonderfully unnecessary research.
Try it tonight: Think of one thing you’ve genuinely wondered about lately and go find out. Stop whenever curiosity stops pulling you forward.
Want more things to do between battles?
I write about gaming, hobbies, curiosity, chronic illness, and all the interesting things that make the hours between everything else feel a little richer.
You enjoy finding, choosing, organizing, and arranging things around your interests. The pleasure isn’t necessarily in making something from scratch. It’s in recognizing the thing worth keeping.
And collecting doesn’t have to mean buying stuff.
Make playlists. Save beautiful game screenshots. Build Pinterest boards. Arrange a shelf. Collect postcards, rocks, interesting leaves, old objects, digital art references, photographs, recipes, or books with covers you love. Curate your game library. Build a mood board for a room you’ll probably redesign twelve times before moving a single chair.
Your collection can exist entirely on your phone if that’s what your energy and budget allow.
You might enjoy: playlists, mood boards, game screenshots, thrifting, postcards, natural finds, digital collections, wishlists, display arranging, or collecting around one wonderfully specific interest.
Try it tonight: Pick one oddly specific thing you enjoy noticing and start a collection using only things you already own or can find for free.
Want more things to do between battles?
Between Battles is about gaming, hobbies, creativity, chronic illness, thrifting, and the small things we choose to keep around because they make life more interesting.
