After a long day at work or after a full week of caring for your home and children, it is time for relaxation, your hobby hour. Hobbies will keep you occupied between work and family, and cultivating a good hobby may have calming or helpful therapeutic side effects.

Hobbies are practiced for enjoyment and interest, rather than financial reward. Engaging in a hobby can lead to acquiring substantial knowledge, skill and experience, but the most important gain is your personal fulfillment.

What are hobbies for some people are professions for others: a programmer may enjoy guitar playing as a hobby, while a professional musician might enjoy programming. But remember that Linux began as a student's hobby.

A hobby doesn't have to cost a fortune to be enjoyable. Activities like sport fishing can be maintained for a reasonable amount spent on equipment and travel, paper-making requires little more than junk mail and a blender, and so on.

The history of the word "hobby":
Falconry was a very popular pastime in the Middle Ages and the "Eurasian Hobby" was perhaps the most popular bird used for this sport.
An alternative origin for the word can be accounted for a recreational animal called hobby - a type of small ambling or pacing horse. A hobby-horse was a wooden toy made to be ridden just like the real hobby. From this came the expression "to ride one's hobby-horse", meaning "to follow your favorite pastime", and in turn, hobby in the modern sense of recreation.

There are hobbies for every personality, lifestyle and budget. Popular hobbies often involve collecting items like coins, stamps, baseball cards, working with your hands like sewing, embroidery or performing an outdoor activity like clowning, hiking or bird watching.

Creating something useful or making a handcrafted item for decoration can be both practical and profitable. Acting, play writing, poetry, playing an instrument, collecting music tapes, or writing song lyrics are all good ways to spend a quality time.

Radio controlled model cars, airplanes, helicopters or boats have opened up a wide spread, interesting recreational activity. Previously sold as toys, today's RC devices are expanding rapidly in complexity and variety.

Board and card games like chess, checkers or mah-jongg are a great way to stimulate your mind and meet new people.

If you are looking for a hobby to fill your leisure time, visit our page about today's most common hobbies. This is not a complete list, but it may help you to get started.

We hope you'll find a hobby that you feel is right for you. Just remember that the most important thing is that you have fun with whatever hobby you choose!