Are you fully embracing your weird niche hobbies? Your weird niche hobbies (AKA the things that light you up, even though they might be unusual, out-of-the-box, or unexpected compared to traditional hobbies) are wonderful to add into your life for personal fulfillment. Let’s talk about the benefits of weird niche hobbies for self development — and examples of my own creative hobbies for self development — in this article…
What are weird niche hobbies?
The definition of weird niche hobbies will vary from one person to the next. Your idea of weird might not be my idea of weird!
Basically, anything outside of the “norm” could be classified as a weird niche hobby, or anything that takes it to an “extreme.”
For example…
- Taking dance classes is a fun creative hobby — not weird at all, right? Nerdlesque dancing on stage in front of an audience (and choreographing those dances, and doing costuming for those dances), however, takes it to another level. It becomes more of that “weird niche hobby” because most people aren’t going to do that (and you might get side-eye from strangers when you mention it).
- Face reading is something you might never have heard of before. It’s not a “normal” hobby, like reading books! It’s a little weird.
- Watching movies and TV shows is a pretty typical hobby. It becomes more of a “weird niche hobby,” on the other hand, when you do research on those franchises and start a podcast diving deep into discussing them.
As you already might have guessed, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with weird niche hobbies. We’re using the term “weird” to describe something unusual or outside the norm — but there’s no “good” or “bad” attachment to it. It’s just a little different, and that can be fantastic.
Weirdness isn’t “good” or “bad.” It just is. And your definition of weird will not be the same as someone else’s, because we get to create what’s “normal” to us.
IMPORTANT: There’s also nothing wrong with having regular or normal hobbies! You don’t need to take every hobby to the next level or “be weird” about it. Enjoying typical hobbies is just as acceptable and awesome as weird hobbies. However, embracing your weird niche hobbies can benefit you in many ways you might not have considered before…
Embracing your weird niche hobbies and why it matters
The more you embrace what lights you up, the more personally fulfilled you will be in life ♥
The problem with “only” doing regular or normal hobbies (rather than weird niche hobbies) is that it might be constraining. ONLY doing normal hobbies might keep you inside a box so that even though you’re enjoying those hobbies, they aren’t lighting a spark. They aren’t things that bring a genuine smile to your face; they aren’t things that you think about in your spare time or could spend hours upon hours (upon hours) doing.
That’s what makes weird niche hobbies different. That’s what sets them apart: The way they fulfill you and satisfy you, deep at the core of your being.
A few questions to explore to start embracing your weird niche hobbies…
- What are you doing with your life?
- How are you spending your time and energy?
- Are you fulfilled and satisfied with what you are doing and how you are doing it?
- What do you enjoy doing, but perhaps keep at arm’s length because other people think it’s “weird” (even though it’s not harming anyone and it makes you happy)?
- What “tickles” you or oddly brings you joy, even though you can’t quite explain it?
Embracing your weird niche hobbies gives you an opportunity to do more of what makes you happy, more of what fills your cup, and more of what personally fulfills you. That’s pretty powerful.
Why should you care about embracing your weird niche hobbies? Because it makes you more YOU. It helps to bring out some of the parts of yourself that you might otherwise keep hidden away. Don’t hide those beautifully weird parts of yourself — doing so is one of the biggest personal development mistakes you can make!
Downplaying or dismissing your weird niche interests holds you back from personal fulfillment and self development.
Benefits of weird niche hobbies for self development
The benefits of weird niche hobbies for self development are numerous: Weird niche interests…
- Immerse you more deeply in the things that bring you joy and personal fulfillment.
- Focus your brain more intensely on doing those specific things (something that many people otherwise struggle with, because we’re pulled in so many different directions in life).
- Enhance your creativity and imagination.
- Activate you to think differently or outside the box (involving critical thinking skills).
- Increase your self honesty and self leadership (because you are being honest with yourself about what lights you up, and you are allowing yourself to be a maverick with doing those things even if no one else you know is doing them).
- Help you to build new skills, often in advanced ways that lead to some degree of expertise because your interest levels are fine-tuned.
- Improve your energy management (because your cup is being filled).
- Give you an opportunity to connect more with people from all walks of life (your weird niche hobbies can often be a portal for meeting like-minded people who you might otherwise never have met).
NOTE: It’s important that you’re genuinely enjoying the weird niche hobbies that you choose. It’s not about choosing hobbies for the sake of having hobbies… and it’s not just about actively doing creative hobbies for self development, in and of itself.
Rather, the self development aspect of it is a beautiful “cherry on top” or side effect or BONUS of doing the weird niche hobbies.
This is also why it’s so, so important that you are having FUN with the hobbies that you choose:
- What do you love doing?
- What do you spend your time thinking about?
- If you had all the time in the world, how would you want to spend it?
You don’t need to stick with the exact same weird niche hobbies your entire life, either! You can do something for as long and as intensely as you like.
This starts with Identify Your Desires, which is Step 1 in my signature Productivity Powerhouse e-course. Check it out yourself for just $49:
Creative hobbies for self development examples
Here are some of my own weird niche hobbies…
1) Burlesque dancing.
I started burlesque dancing in 2017 (taking classes and performing on stage) and fell in love with it right away. I've been doing it ever since...
Last year, I took a Solo Development class and began doing solo burlesque acts, too!
This includes:
- Coming up with concepts.
- Choreographing dances.
- Embodying a specific character.
- Putting on a persona (I’m not “just” the character for that specific burlesque act… I am my stage persona, Babe Maverick, as that character for that specific act).
- Playing with musicality.
- Being intentional with gestures and facial expressions.
- Going “big” with performance presence and making full use of the stage.
- Costuming.
- …etc!
For example:
Last month, I performed a “popcorn showgirl” solo. It was exactly like it sounds: I dressed up in a giant popcorn outfit and did a showgirl dance on stage (to the song Piece of Me by Britney Spears, haha!)
It took many, many, MANY hours to do the costuming for my popcorn showgirl outfit. I rhinestoned the gigantic popcorn outfit plus my corset plus my dance panties plus my popcorn fascinator headpiece plus my pasties; I hand-sewed fringe onto two layers of my costume. Most of the rhinestones needed to be individually glued. It was literally hundreds upon hundreds of rhinestones!
Check out the full details and story of it on my Babe Maverick burlesque account on Instagram — I documented the full journey of costuming (plus mistakes I made along the way, troubleshooting and problem solving, results at each stage of the process, and more) on my Instagram Stories, and then saved them all in the Costuming highlight on my profile.
I had so much fun doing it. I absolutely loved rhinestoning my costume, and the results were hilarious and adorable and so deeply satisfying. It was a really fun way to spend all those hours — check it out:
This popcorn showgirl number was the fourth solo act I’ve created. To give you an idea of how nerdy and weird I can get, here are the other solo acts I’ve done so far…
- Die Hard in 3 Minutes (I acted out the movie Die Hard as a one-woman act, but did it in 3 minutes and through burlesque dance).
- Top Gun chair dance (I wore a Top Gun outfit and incorporated some Top Gun elements while doing a burlesque chair dance).
- Lose Yourself lip syncing (I lip synced the entirety of Eminem’s Lose Yourself while doing burlesque dance).
As you can see, I typically do movie-inspired burlesque acts (my stage name, Babe Maverick, is a nod to Top Gun); even my popcorn solo was movie theme-adjacent because I was dressed up as movie theatre popcorn 🙂
My style of burlesque is typically comedic (one of my fellow dancers recently joked that I’m the comedy queen!), and plays along the edge of nerdlesque and burlesque fusion — it’s very much in the neo-burlesque category.
It’s weird and fun!
2) Face reading (from a Chinese Medicine perspective).
I first learned about face reading in Chinese Medicine years and years ago when I was assisting my mom at an acupuncture conference (she’s a veterinarian who’s also trained and certified in acupuncture). I bought the Face Reading in Chinese Medicine book by Lillian Bridges shortly after that conference and I was HOOKED!
And then, nearly two years ago, I enrolled in the Master Face Reading Program with the Lotus Institute. It’s a deep-dive into face reading with comprehensive teachings and skills training, and it is a whole new way of seeing ourselves and other people. It’s something I can use in the coaching I do with clients, and it’s also simply another way to learn more about myself and other people.
The program wasn’t cheap at $4,200 USD, but it was absolutely worth it. It’s fascinating to learn how to do face reading and all of the background associated with it.
(Weird niche hobbies don’t always need to be expensive! But they often can involve some type of *investment* on your part — whether that’s money, time, energy, attention, etc.)
3) Can We Talk About? (podcast diving deep into enthusiasm for movie franchise lore, fun facts, interpretation, and catching you up on the content of those movies)
My sister and I recently started the Can We Talk About? podcast as a place for us to chat about movie franchises, discuss our thoughts on those movies, share fun facts and lore, and provide quick recaps of previous movies in the franchises (catching you up on what you need to know before you see the latest installment!).
And it is SO much fun! It’s also rather a commitment: I watched 13 movies in preparation for our Deadpool and Wolverine episode, and 9 movies in preparation for our Alien episode — not to mention the side research for extra details about the making of those movies, the recording of the podcast episodes themselves, and editing the episodes afterward.
For what purpose would I watch that many movies? Because I love watching movies! I had so much fun trying to figure out the weird inconsistencies and time travel issues in the X-Men movies in preparation for the Deadpool and Wolverine episode, for example; I also loved piecing together Easter eggs in the Alien franchise.
If each movie is about 2 hours long, that means I probably spent a minimum of 44 hours to do 2 episodes of a hobby podcast. (Again, that doesn’t include recording time and editing time.)
And honestly? To me, that’s a wonderful use of my time. Because I enjoyed watching those movies. I enjoyed hanging out with my sister and getting the chance to discuss these movies with her. And since we’re talking about embracing our weird niche hobbies and our weirdo selves, to be honest I also get a weird little thrill out of editing out “ums” before we publish podcast episodes.
Nerding out over the things we enjoy is one of the best uses of our time and energy!
Check out the Can We Talk About? podcast here:
These are just a few examples of the fun creative hobbies for self development (and simply for the joy of it!) that I do.
Even this blog started out waaaaay back in 2008 (yes, 16 years ago!) as a weird niche hobby. Back then, it was a healthy living blog; I documented fitness challenges, nutrition experiments, general wellness and lifestyle adventures, and so on. I blogged religiously and I was very involved with the healthy blogging community.
I also write polyamorous romantic comedy novels (a little different than what you’d typically expect from romcoms — it’s a niche genre!), and I LOVE brainstorming ideas and mapping out plans (so even “general planning and ideation” could potentially be considered a weird niche interest of mine).
Another example of something that could be considered a weird niche hobby is walking. When people find out that I like to walk everywhere as my preferred form of commute, they often give me funny looks! Why walk for 40 minutes when you could drive there in 10 minutes? Because walking fills my cup. Walking makes my heart happy. I can easily walk for over an hour a day and still want to keep going. Walking, to me, is an excellent use of my time; I’d pretty much always prefer to walk rather than drive.
Home-based business owner time freedom gives you the space for enjoying your weird niche interests
All of this brings us to one of my favourite things about having home-based business owner time freedom and using anti-hustle methods as the foundation for *everything* in my life and business: It enables you to fully embrace your niche interests and your li’l weirdo self!
To me, THIS is a huge part of what life is all about… What makes your heart happy? What lights you up? What do you love to discuss at length and in great detail? What are you delighted to devote time and energy to doing?
“Why would you spend hours upon hours rhinestoning a giant popcorn outfit and then design showgirl choreography to go with it?”
Because it’s fun!
“Why would you watch TWENTY-TWO movies and go into cinematic universe lore and research the makings of various movies in preparation for recording just 2 episodes of a hobby podcast?”
Because it’s fun!
We want to be able to do these fun, ridiculous things with our lives ♥
Your life is for doing the things that make you laugh with delight, for doing the stuff that tickles you, for delving into strange niche interests *for the simple reason* that it brings you joy.
(And how YOU want to spend your time and energy will likely be different than how I do it — that’s great! You do YOU!)
Prioritizing your beautiful, strange, delightfully weird niche interests — and fully EMBRACING your weird niche hobbies — is such a lovely thing to be able to do in your life.
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More examples of creative hobbies for self development…
There are truly countless weird niche interests for you to indulge in! Here are just a few ideas to get you started…
- Creating fitness regimens based on what superheroes might do.
- Seasonal cookie decorating.
- Memorizing song lyrics and doing competitive lip syncing.
- Doing miniature artwork on reclaimed wood.
- Making ceramics and pottery from specific historical time periods.
- Painting your nails to look like the book cover of your favourite books.
There are a million other ideas for what you could do as your fun creative hobbies for self development and personal fulfillment!
What will you do to start embracing your weird niche hobbies?
IMPORTANT: Hobbies don't need to make money
Many people find themselves so deeply immersed in their weird niche hobbies that they turn it into a business, and that’s great — but it’s also not necessary.
Please don’t feel as though your hobby needs to make you money.
Your hobby does not need to turn into a business in order for it to be worthy of your time, energy, and attention.
If you WANT to turn it into a side hustle or your full-time living, that’s great! You do you. And also — if you simply want to do it because it makes you happy and fulfilled, that’s great too!
Let me reiterate: Your hobby does NOT need to bring in an income in order for it to be worthy of your time, energy, and attention.
The fact that you enjoy your hobbies and the fact that they personally fulfill you IS what makes them worth of your time, energy, and attention.
How to choose a hobby that suits you…
Choosing a hobby that suits you is fairly simple: It’s about what intrigues you, where you want to direct your time and energy and attention, what fulfills you and lights you up.
Often, your weird niche interests might challenge you in some way — and in that case, the challenge of it should be something that appeals to you and excites you, rather than feeling like a slog.
If your hobby is something you don’t genuinely WANT to do, or if your hobby is something that makes you impatient when you’re actively doing it, or if your hobby feels boring or disinteresting, those are all signs it’s likely not the right hobby for you.
This comes down to learning what YOU genuinely want, at your core. This is about identifying your truest desires. This is about activating your intuition and learning how to be honest with yourself and how to trust yourself in the choices you make and in the way that you spend your time and energy.
Get started with doing all of this and more:
