Appreciating Without Taking Part

There are many, many, many hobbies outside of the baseball card hobby. I've dabbled in some, I've heard of others, I can't even imagine many of them because the number of things humans do in their leisure time is... infinite.

That said wasting time on YouTube (which is a hobby in and of itself sometimes) has exposed me to a lot of different hobbies that exist outside the realm of collecting trading cards. The appeal, to me at least, is how I don't have to personally get involved. Just watching people make things happen for themselves on YouTube just for the sake of their hobby is great.

Case in point, toy car restoration. On YouTube there is an entire genre of people just restoring old toy cars to look almost as good as new and it's wonderful.

My favorite out of all of them is a YouTuber named baremetalHW. Reason being that their delivery is so chill and deep that it's relaxing. It's somewhat soothing. I'll never do half of the things discussed in these videos but it's incredibly inviting and keeps me invested.

Here's an early but very good example of them at their best. They take a car that's been destroyed to a point where the wheels are pretty much gone, then they manage to turn it into something.

This is a more recent video and shows that they got better with more time and experience making videos (as well as in regards to toy car repair in general).

Of course baremetalHW's videos aren't limited to just these specific kinds of videos.

They also do custom cars for the purposes of making dioramas or replicas Often based on a theme like recreating Mad Max vehicles.

It's all gold in my opinion.

I think part of the appeal for me is that they are getting things done with their hands. You can see the progress happening as the magic of editing lets us know that hours upon hours of painstaking work was put into these little DIY projects.

I'm a sucker for these artsy, craftsy, DIY stuff focused on toys. I don't have the experience, tools, supplies or the drive to do it myself, but seeing people who have all of the above go out and do it is great to me.

FWIW there are other YouTubers who do similar things like Marty's Matchbox Makeovers who do wonders with Matchbox brand cars specifically.

Also somehow I ended up going down the rabbithole that is DIY art project YouTube and I stumbled upon Black Magic Craft.

This is less about fixing toy cars but more about creating buildings (often with a fantasy or D&D twist) to life using things like styrofoam and cardboard. Pretty cool.

What all of these have in common is that I don't feel the need to partake in any of this myself. I can appreciate this as a neutral observer just watching people who really love their hobby do their stuff. Of course sometimes I feel like I want to, but I know that these aren't hobbies one just jumps into and expects to nail right away. They can't all be as simple as spending money on parts of cardboard.

So yeah. Check all of these folks out if you ever have the time. I found myself managing to kill some spare time just watching their videos and letting what was happening wash over me.

As always thanks for stopping by and take care :).