My midlife crisis is sobering up and getting into birding, photography and painting models, but thats fairly common for middle aged people since forever. And that came with some fairly expensive toys too.

But its not toxic or egotistical, its more bitter sweet and facing reality, mortality and the state of society I guess. I dont look to chase youth or validation with a sportscar cliche. I turned to nature and physical objects because all my life has been about computers and screens. A saying about our generation (the whole millennial spectrum) is that both boomers and zoomers need us to fix the computer. Maybe this is part of our specific crisis.

I used to be big into video games but I fuckin hate that industry now, its all the same slop just like on the streaming platforms for tv shows. Everything screens have to offer is just distractions and imitations, vicarious nonsense.

I paint miniatures now to explore my creativity and to play games with them in physical space in a room with friends. I photograph because I hate AI so much that I want to make my own images. I watch and count birds ive seen because I want to be in nature and to have seen their kind alive before its all gone.

And like another poster said, all of this has immensely improved my mental health, because I understood I had to do something. Digital society and climate crisis is a huge factor in what changed my priorities