My Hobbies Were Chosen by Dice for 30 Days and the Dice Have No Respect for Me

There's a moment in every nerd's life when they realize their 'hobbies' are actually just one hobby — sitting down — performed in different rooms. Mine is gaming, occasionally painting, and 'researching' games I'll never play. So naturally, I did what any rational person does when confronted with their own monotony: I built a spreadsheet, assigned numbers to hobbies I'd always claimed to 'get around to,' and let a random number generator run my free time for a month.

The results were humbling, occasionally sticky, and — I'm sorry to report — kind of great.

The Rules (Because Chaos Needs Structure)

The setup was simple. I listed twelve activities, rolled a d20, and whatever number came up was my weekend. No rerolls, no 'well actually that one's broken,' no sneaking in a reroll because the dice dared to suggest I leave my house.

The list included:

• Painting Warhammer minis (a $60 mistake waiting to happen)
• Competitive Mario Kart speedrunning (against my own ghost, who is undefeated)
• Learning to juggle (I don't know why this was on the list; past me is a saboteur)
• A board game night with actual humans
• Building a mechanical keyboard (the hobby equivalent of setting money on fire, but prettier)

Week One: The Miniature Financial Crisis

The dice opened with Warhammer painting, which is less a hobby and more a subscription service with brushes. I bought a starter set, watched forty minutes of YouTube tutorials by men with unsettlingly steady hands, and produced what I can only describe as a small purple man who appears to be melting.

But here's the thing nobody tells you: it was meditative. For three hours, my brain went quiet for the first time since roughly 2011. I'm not saying the mini was good. I'm saying the silence was.

Week Two: My Ghost Beat Me

Mario Kart speedrunning was next, and I have receipts: my best time on Rainbow Road got beaten by a replay of myself from two days prior. There is no deeper humiliation in gaming than losing to your own highlight reel. I have never felt more like an NPC in my own life.

The Verdict: Nerd Cred Is a Rigged Loot Table

By week four, a pattern emerged. The hobbies I 'should' love for maximum nerd cred — the ones with communities, Discord servers, and gatekeeping lore — were the ones I bounced off hardest. The ones that stuck were the weird, quiet ones nobody claps for.

Which leads me to my big, slightly sad conclusion: nerd cred isn't something you can grind for. It's not XP. It's a random drop, and the drop rate is terrible, and half the time what you actually get is a small purple melting man and a story about it.

The dice have been retired. But the juggling balls? Still in the closet. Just in case.