Hardsuit Hobbies!

Last week we looked at the amazing sporty activities the team engages in to blow off steam after work. But not everyone has to hunker down, lift weights, or run for a few miles to reboot after a long work day. Many of us have creative hobbies that are on the quieter side, such as…

• Miniature Painting & Gaming

No matter which system or use, miniatures are a fascinating hobby! Two-to-three-inch figurines painted with incredibly fine paint brushes to deliver stunning final results – what's not to like? Hardsuit Labs has several people who love this pastime; some even have colossal gaming tables to play their miniature game of choice with friends on a weekend afternoon!

We asked our team to share pictures of their minis for this piece, and it was tough to pick only one. Check out our Twitter account to see some more of them!

• Music

Whether using software to create full musical scores for their enjoyment or only recently deciding to learn an instrument, HSL has a few very musically inclined people in our midst! One team member enjoys collecting vinyl records, while Another wrote a score for a fictional game! We have a dedicated fun channel to share music from known and lesser-known artists and some seriously talented Pilots here who share their passion with us all. Sometimes you will hear a guitar being strummed while one of our leadership team members waits for a meeting to begin.

• Arts and Crafts

Whether it is making small jewelry pieces, creating beautiful quilts that need to be gifted each year on Christmas, or having shelves upon shelves of Witches Brew magic potion bottles – our team enjoys being crafty! After spending all day in the structured confines of having to solve whatever new complex requirement work might throw at us, sitting down and just using our hands and brains for something different can be so refreshing. As with other hobbies of ours, we have a fun channel dedicated to being crafty - and the frequent posts showing off recent projects are making those of us with two left hands very envious~

• Cooking

Many HSL Pilots love to take their time to cook a nice meal after a long day of sitting at a desk. Recipes are being swapped, pictures of delicious food are shared, and we still try to have potlucks and cookoffs at the office, even if these have fewer participants since we started to work from home more. One pilot and his wife are general offenders making us all hungry with photos of the delicious meals they cook together, as seen in the picture of a Flammkuchen right here.

• Writing

We have several passionate writers at Hardsuit Labs! Between writing fanfiction for games and shows we enjoy, writing for wikis and fandom lore pages, and writing our own original works, we have a surprising stack of creative writing happening when we leave work. Of course, gaming has many different professions that require us to write a lot – these blogs are an example - but writing as a hobby goes beyond our daytime jobs. Writing helps us clear our heads from the necessity of crafting technical bug reports or lines of code and allows us to use our keyboard for something much more freeform.

• Non-Profit Work

All around the Seattle area, there is an abundance of good causes that our team is involved in. One of our leadership team is an administrator for a second-hand trade website on social media. Several team members volunteer at food banks during their spare time, just as others volunteer with youth sports groups. One person assists with an online resource for transformative art, while another is a dog walker for the city shelter. Helping in your community is incredibly rewarding, and it can be a fantastic destresser after a long week of hunting down bugs in the code.

• Board Games and Card Games

The collection of board games, trading card games, and other non-digital gaming across all team members in the office is staggering. With fewer people in the office, we no longer have big lunch break games being played. However, team members still love meeting to check out new games, challenge one another to card game duels, and nerd out together over the upcoming Kickstarter campaigns for new releases! To protect the innocent, we will not reveal how many team members have run out of shelving space for their collections at the time of writing this piece.

We have a very diverse set of people at Hardsuit Labs, and we're happy that people love sharing their passions.

Remember that we have our team introduction pages if you're working at HSL! Make sure yours is up, and check out those of others to find like-minded Pilots to nerd out with!