Besides drinking and smoking and all the other fun rebellious debauchery most of us indulge in after leaving TSCC, I'm wondering if anyone took up any hobbies or did something they always dreamed of doing but couldn't while a member.

For me, it was showing horses. I couldn't do it as a teen when I was a member because horse shows are on the weekends (Sundays included). I'm living the dream as an adult now.

I'm pretty accomplished at it now, actually.

I also have a friend who writes erotica for a living, and have been to places where she reads her newly released works. Just to be supportive, you understand.

Btw, I DO regard these hobbies as innocent. I break no laws, and harm no one.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/30/2012 11:57AM by helamonster.

horse shows here in Miami! it is lots of work it seems!

Hey, I ride Paso Fino horses also and I'm involved in horse shows with Tennessee Walkers. Trying to educate the public about the abuse of horses, including Tennessee Walkers, Painted horses, Arabians, etc and the Bureau of Land Mismanagement and their treatment of wild horses. Not pretty. At least I feel now I'm doing something positive with my time instead of wasting it in mind numbing activities.

Riding motorcycles. My dad wouldn't let me get one because I couldn't die until I served a mission. He said that was his job to get me through my mission (and then he was off the hook I guess).

Now I can take trips and ride on Sundays without a shred of guilt. I use my 10% to buy motorcyles and toys.

Hey! I ride a motorcycle too! Ride a horse, ride a motorcycle. Never gave birth. Got a nose piercing. Got a few tattoos. I love being able to just. be. me.

we bought a bike, too!!
Sunday rides are our new religion!!
Mr ambivalentmo and I joke that
we are being blessed
for NOT paying tithing.

Oh, and I just recently Hung up my latest painting
of the nude female form
in my living room.
Why I was ever ashamed to display my artwork
will forever haunt me......

Ok, ok,
I mostly put the nude painting
up for shock value
when my tbm relatives stop by.......
the reaction on mommy dearests face
was priceless



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/30/2012 12:56PM by ambivalent exmo.

You know what this means. You guys totally need to form an ex-Mormon Motorcycle Riders Club.

!!! He said he cant let you die until you went on a mission? Sorry... but that makes it sound like you are a disposable tool for the church. :(

I think it goes along with the myth that if you die on your mission, you go straight to heaven. I guess he thought he was doing me a favor.

And thanks for supporting my idea that my dad is F'd up in the head. It wasn't till I left that I realized what cult mentality was.

Now an Exmormon bike rally would be an event I might show up to. We could do a tour of some local chapels and go to all the classes and ask a bunch of hard questions.

Northern California. KTM950 ADV is my current ride.

Roller derby.

Roller derby, thats awesome! Too hard core for me, I don't like getting hurt. I have a friend who plays. I love all the creative names they come up with.

I thought of another one: trivia night. One-because it is at a pub. Two- because it is Wed nights, which, if I recall, is some kind of activity night at the church.

Did it anyway. Haha.

I have always wanted to try meed. Well, at least since I got done rereading "Eaters of the Dead" last month. Any suggestions on good brands or where to find a case?

Try the local package store if in Utah. Any well-appointed liquor store elsewhere should either have some, or can get it.

For "craft mead", you'd have to try a specialty beer store.

Even though it is probably the most widely available, I wouldn't use Chaucer's as an example of a mead to try for the first time. They rack and bottle it very young, resulting in a thick, waxy and cloyingly sweet bevvie. If it had been my first mead, I probably wouldn't have tried mead again. As Helamonster suggested, find a craft brew shop to buy something drinkable. Better yet, make a batch, it's lots of fun and much easier than brewing beer.

I did all these, although warned against it.

I did D&D starting in 2000 with a group of guys on my floor at DT, freshman year at BYU. It wasn't until later that someone a decade older than me said that the church was against it, and it had been a big deal in his days. No church leader ever told us not to do it, and so we continued to have lots of fun. Not a big deal in generation-Y I guess. Perhaps this occasional delving into the satanic occult led to me losing my testimony ten years later.

R-Rated movies are my new innocent hobby. There's a vast world of really good and meaningful movies I never would have seen if I'd stayed mormon.

I got to play with Tracy Hickman once, who was active LDS. I never understood why some Mormons made such an issue of Dungeons & Dragons or claimed that the Church had released some statement condemning it, which they were never able to produce. I was also a fan of J.R.R. Tolkien's books, which Mormons hilariously believed were satanic.

I never understood either why the Lord endorsed the MPAA rating system. I watched my first rated R movie in a Psychology class in high school when I was 17. It was called Ordinary People. There was no violence, no sex or nudity of any kind, and no swearing other than a single use of the F word, and it was a really great movie. After that I decided that I didn't care if movies were rated R or not, as I was an adult and I get to decide these things for myself. I found that just about every other Mormon I knew also watched rated R movies, and usually the ones with nudity in them.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/30/2012 01:51PM by Makurosu.

They quietly dropped the anti-D&D and JRR Tolkien stuff when the Lord of the Rings movies came out. I don't think it was anything official. There were a bunch of baptist groups against both down here in the south too, but then when the movies came out, they pretty much shut up and went away, because people stopped humoring them and got plenty vocal in telling them they were idiots.

With religious zealots you can't worry about hurting their feelings. You have to speak clear to them that they are wrong. Do it respectfully sure, but to say nothing is to enable their lunacy.

Hell, collecting anything that doesn't "lift the spirit."

My sis and I were avid comic collectors in the 90s (I think she still is) and a lot of ward members seemed really put off by that hobby.

Where you can write out your truth. Not the stupid sugar-coated-so-bad-it-makes-your-teeth-hurt Mormon kind they push you into writing! It's amazing how much doing it YOUR way is so much better!

I've researched it a lot for my former website, and the Mormon sites about journaling are laughable. You're supposed to write good things only, particularly about the cult... I mean church.

No wonder if you mention journal writing to an ex-mo they get that green-around-the-gills look, like someone told them there was an insect in their funereal potatoes.

Model photography. Crime/violent/romance novels. Sports tourney on Sunday. Hard/heavy/acid/punk rock band.

The first thing I did after leaving the Church? I went to Vegas!

I didn't gamble 1 loonie, drink or smoke, but I could go to Vegas without worrying that the ward would implode without me there as one of the few members literate enough to serve in any calling requiring readin', ritin' or rithmetic.

When my TBM ex-wife learned through our children that I was in LV she was jealous that we had never gone to Vegas. While I was in Vegas I calculated that the tithing we were paying could have taken us to Vegas ~4 times/year.

Kind of difficult to gamble with Loonies in Vegas.

When I moved from Cali to SLC at the age of 18, I was mildly shocked to hear half the Elder's quorum talk about their Friday night-Saturday night gambling trips to Wendover. I was raised to equate gambling with drinking and smoking.

Our entire family used to go to Lake Powell every summer for a week. We were never allowed to waterski or swim or even get in the water on Sunday. Hell, we even had our own little sacrament meeting on top of the houseboat. Last Sunday, took my kids to a lake and we played in it all day long! Satan must have been working on his tan instead of trolling the water for Mormons.

We bought a boat with our tithing money. Every Sunday that has good weather, guess where we are?

I even got my 'TBM' wife to join a nudist club, BEFORE the Bp got wind of it, that is.

It was a wonderful getaway, and once we even brought the kids :)

Didn't Romney's wife show horses or participate in some horse sport of some sort????

My father always wanted to have a model train room to share with his boys when we were growing up, but he was always either a bishop, on the Stake Presidency, or serving on the High Council, so never had the time to fulfill this dream. Whenever he saw a model train somewhere though, he talked about it. We all grew up and left the house and the church, and I think my Dad gave up on the dream because it was really something he wanted to do with us.

With everything he spent on tithing, he easily could have afforded it.

I myself have always wanted to write a book, but the stories I wanted to tell were stories I knew the church would not like. I write a lot on the side, though my ADD has prevented me from ever finishing a project.

One hobby I did pick up after leaving is home brewing, as beer and mead are against the WoW. I also do archery which most practices and tournaments are held on Sundays.

My otherwise TBM ex had hobbies that weren't exactly church approved such as RPG games including D&D, and was told he couldn't play with any face cards inside a local community college's Institute building. The game he was playing was Magic, the Gathering. One thing my ex and I did have in common was our love of movies, and I never had to hide my enjoyment of R rated movies around him as one of his favorite movies was Saving Private Ryan.

I think a lot of hobbies/interests are frowned on in the realm of mormondom not because they go against some silly "commandment" or other practice, but just because they're not part of mormon culture. If an active (and totally straight) mormon guy collected avant garde art and was active in his local Sierra Club chapter, the other guys in his EQ would just think he was weird. Goes back to what CA Girl said in a thread several weeks ago, about how many Mormons have a "If we're not good at it or interested in it its stupid" attitude.

Funny how fucked up some Dad's are....not letting you have a motorcycle so you wouldn't die before your mission????..bizarre....my kid brother got a Honda 55 when he was 14 to ride into the city to play baseball (we lived on a farm)...and we were always riding out bikes on country roads without helmets (not invented for bicycles yet), swimming in the canals on hot summer days without a lifeguard in sight, etc. My folks were very TBM but were also rational thinking realists about life in general. Not like the uber-zealot lunatics I read about here all the time. Oh and I am trap shooting on every summer Sunday I can for the last 34 years....that IS my religion...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/30/2012 02:13PM by Lethbridge Reprobate.

See comment above.

I love this thread. I'm pretty new here btw. What is it with motorcycles? As a kid, I was obsessed about with motorcycles! My dad raced them as a kid and into his 20's. My uncle still races them and he's in his 50's. Well dad joins the church in his 20's, there goes the bikes and everything fun he did in life (bikes, hunting, moderate drinking etc). I still wasn't born yet. He refused to help me buy one, or even help me work on a crappy one that I was able to buy when I was like 12, nevermind he is a mechanic. He would always tell me he could have paid for a mission with all of the money he spent on bikes. News flash weren't mo then, how the hell do you figure it in your head like its a regret or something. My youner brother was the same way about bikes, loves them. So instead of being able something fun with your kids he was too damn broke paying tithing and too busy being bishop etc. Flash foward a bunch of years, I have all bikes and toys. My son, learned to ride his dirt bike when he was 4 and we go all the time even on sundays. The ex-wife is not too happy about it, but he sure is! The Morg is a fun killer plain and simple!

I do some Home Brewing as well, I just started that about six months ago.

For the last 7-8 years, I have been raising Bonsai. I have quite a varied collection now. Some I have taken as small trees, Cedar and Maple that I dug up close to home. Some I have raised from seed, six shore pines in a cluster. I have flowering Azealas, and a Cotoneaster. During the summer, it keeps me pretty busy watering and trimming. It is very relaxing, and I enjoy the thrill of creating art out of living things.

My favorite hobby is RFM.

Is Bonsai raising against the principles of the church now?

Steve Young, famous NFL quarterback and well-respected Mormon, regularly broke Sabbath to boost his football career?

It's not like he had to put in those extra hours to make next month's rent.

I still wish I could see just one of Steve Young's tithing yellow sheets...

Did they print him special ones? There's no way he could fit all the zeroes in that little box.

surfing

My husband ran a game store in Provo, and he kept running into "The church doesn't approve of this," so he decided to find out for sure. He spent the day on the phone working his way through the church hierarchy, trying to get a definitive answer. Finally, someone in the President's office told him that the church's opinion was "it's a waste of time that could be used on more Godly things, but there are much worse things that someone could spend their time on." They said that, like most things, it could be misused but there was nothing inherently wrong with gaming.

I don't know if they ever sent him something in writing, but many Moms were reassured that he'd talked to the church about it. This was in the 90s.

I did woodwork on sunday afternoons (after church). It was my way of relaxing.

My wife had had an interview with the bishop and raised this as an issue she was concerned with.

i was called to a "personal"one to one with the bishop.

He told me "i was to stop all wood projects on a sunday"

I was to sit with my wife with spiritual contemplation - not have hobbies.

Not long after - i walked - with all the problems that caused !