I keep cutting out things like social media from my lifestyle, but I’m finding it hard to fill the time. Reading can only go so far, there’s never anything on TV, and my friends all live twelve miles away.
So, before we really had social media, what did teenagers do?
so the “obvious” thing that’s doable even when solo is just “hobbies”. music making, game making, pottery if you can get ahold of (someone with) a kiln, drawing, etc.
but on the non-creative side (because let’s be honest as a teen you’re often too mentally exhausted from school for those), hop on a bike, choose a direction, and find all the weird treasures on the outskirts of town. plenty of “weird things in the desert” and all that — but people take that trope too literally to notice that it’s really “weird things in the places people don’t frequent”: last week i stumbled across a few pallets of bees staged off a gravel road 5mi from my home. dunno if they’re being transported, brought in for pollination, or what, but it was a fun find all the same.