Explaining hobbies is weird

I am not that good at talking in person or explaining myself, even less so when it comes to things I like

I don’t know why I always have a hard time with this, but I just can’t help but give up on explaining many of the things I like which are unfamiliar to a lot of people.

Using Linux is usually acceptable enough, unless I am on my window manager and I can’t explain what key bindings do what, or what even is a key binding at all.

Doing magic tricks tends to be like “how did you do it?” and me being like “it’s a secret” and then not knowing how to continue the conversation.

Speedsolving a Rubik’s cube is entertaining for a couple minutes but then they want to borrow, twist its corners, or spend an hour teaching them how to solve it.

Reading manga leads to trying to summarize random stories that are kind of cringe out of context, unless it’s a sports manga maybe, which still seems childish.

People borrowing my phone are unable to recognize the apps because of my icon pack, the hidden dock, and using gestures for everything with Nova Launcher.

Gaming on my retro handhelds is kind of normal, until they ask what I’m playing and it’s not Mario, Pokemón or FIFA. The answer tends to be “A role-playing game,” usually Final Fantasy which leads people to just nod, trying to explain what Final Fantasy is doesn’t help.

Also, trying to even pronounce RG35XX SP in Spanish is absolutely painful. But here it is: Erre je treinta y cinco equis equis ese pe.

Add to this the few times I don’t even know what words to use because I learn in English rather than Spanish and there’s many words I just know and think in English and can’t translate in real time at all!

But the thing is, I know that I am for sure, not the craziest guy out there, I don’t know that much about Linux, there’s a lot of of card handling techniques I can’t do well, I am definitely not the fastest cuber, not even in my small city, I don’t really read that much manga—this one’s up for debate—and I don’t play videogames that often, my Android setup is pretty standard—for a Nova Launcher user at least.

I don’t really feel like I do anything truly weird or special, but at the same time I don’t really know how to explain things like this to people. I am into a lot of rabbit holes that require quite a bit of prior knowledge, but that’s it, I am not an expert at anything, I am not truly addicted to anything.

I kinda want to delete this post because it feels kind of entitled, I guess I just wanted to write something and if you want to know the true reason behind it, it’s this: I could’t explain Sakamoto Days’ premise to a co-worker and I felt kinda cringe about it.

I should have said “this manga is about a retired hitman who protects his family from the organization he used to work for”, but I didn’t remember the Spanish word for hitman and I had to explain what that was, and I didn’t mention that there are assasins after him either so it kinda sounded like he just killed random people, and then I had to explain what manga was, and how did I even had access to it for free, but then the conversation deviated to something else and it was too late to backtrack and explain things properly at that point.

I guess I’m just pretty awkward when it comes to talking to people.

This has been day 69 of #100DaysToOffload

https://fosstodon.org/@joel/113077349968686496

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