Introvert Talks - What I Do During My Free Time

Welcome to Introvert Talks!

"Introvert Talks" is meant to be a new initiative or theme, where I myself as an introvert, just talk about reflections and thoughts about my life, or maybe share more personal stuff. :)

This is my weekly post under this "Introvert Talks" theme and let's see where it takes me and us.

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I often get this question, especially when meeting new people, "What do you do during your free time?"

Sometimes I feel it's such a weird question, because I am a person who likes to organise my time, my very honest answer would actually be "I actually don't really have much free time". Of course, that might sound a little odd or perhaps rude to give a non-answer. Going through my internal translation into layman language, I guess they are asking me what I do outside of my working hours, or more directly, my hobbies.

I am not trying to be difficult, but I feel that work and life can sometimes be too integrated these days and it's sometimes hard to draw a hard line between what constitutes a job and what constitutes a hobby.

Anyway, ultimately, the depth of my answer depends on how close I am to the person who asked that question.

1. Current Affairs + Financial Markets + Social Media

I do spend a lot of time reading up on current affairs, particularly on financial markets. That said, any major events (especially the geopolitical ones) could have an impact on the financial markets (which include crypto markets of course) and these are the stuff that I try to follow as closely as I can. My sources of information include from both mainstream media as well as social media. I have recently grown a liking to X (formerly known as Twitter) because I find that news flow much faster because people can post so quickly. Of course, the downside would be the risk of misinformation but that can be mitigated by following users that are more reputable on the platform. And hence I have lumped all of them under one "hobby", which might look like an odd combination. Haha.

In fact, just this "hobby" alone can take up a huge amount of time because there's an endless of information and we all know crypto markets are 24/7. It's something that I try to manage so that I still have time for other aspects of my life. Fortunately, the good part about this "hobby" is that I can do this on the go on my mobile phone, be it on the train to work, or just chilling at the cafe.

2. Hive

I was thinking how I should sequence the list I had in mind, and I thought maybe I would go by the frequency, starting with those that I engage on a daily basis. And Hive is one of them. As long as time permits, I am on Hive everyday. I used to write a post everyday, but these days, (which I have mentioned in one of my earlier posts), I am in the midst of a transition, and there are just days which I would just read, curate and comment on others' posts. And "Introvert Talks" was born out of this transition too! Hehe!

It has been more than 3 years for my Hive journey but I will leave the reflections and stocktake for the upcoming quarterly update. ;)

3. Mobile Games

I do play some mobile games. I think the most popular one would be Pokemon GO but I have stopped sometime in 2022. I know some people feel like these mobile games can be "waste of time" because it's not meaningful use of time. In a way, I agree, but I think the difference here is that I was actually roped in to play them by my friends and I think it can be quite fun playing these games with people I know.

Currently I am playing just two mobile games. One of them is Monopoly GO. This is the loading screen, following by the board which we are all familiar with. It's actually quite an easy game to play and there's no brain power involved so it's really casual.

I think what's different from the board game is that the mobile game has this sticker challenge where we play to find stickers to complete our sticker albums. With friends, it's easier because we can exchange stickers with one another and that's the element of interactions. There are also group challenges and competitions to keep players on the toes as well.

The second mobile game would Empires And Puzzles. It's a game that I have been playing for.. Gosh I can't really remember when I started playing this. It was definitely before Covid, so maybe since 2019 or even earlier?

The game has evolved a lot over the years but some things are still quite the same. This is the "base" where you mine resources and train heroes and craft items, etc.

This is my hero roster! After grinding for so many years, most of my heroes are at their maximum levels. It's a little like Splinterlands BUT these are not NFTs so they have zero monetary value.

Mr. Pengi is my favourite hero because it's currently my most powerful card. Of course, new heroes come out every now and then, and it makes players spend more time to try to get them to upgrade the roster. As for me, I am quite a casual player so I just play with what I have. There's a lot of strategy involved because each hero has a unique ability, so similar to Splinterlands, a weaker deck can overcome a stronger deck.

Of course, I still have a long list of activities that I engage during my "free time", but those are more sporadic (like exercising, oops!) so they are down the pecking order. For now, these are the major ones. That's all I have this week - thanks for reading and joining me on my self-talking journey! :P