It’s 2024. The shiny veneer of your brand-new gym membership card is fading; the bellows of “new year, new me” around your friend group are softening. But if you still have it in your heart to have a new hobby, skill or obsession to define yourself with this January, here’s a list of great hobbies that are chilly-weather friendly and promote better mental health, too.

Knitting and Crochet

If you’re a person who likes to have fun but also create something useful and permanent at the same time, knitting or crocheting is an affordable and user-friendly place to start. Tools like knitting needles, crochet hooks and helpful supplements like stitch markers are commonly found at craft stores for under $10, similarly priced to the balls of yarn used to make your project come to life!

The possibilities are endless, and the internet is filled to the brim with YouTube tutorials, yarn clearance sales and free project patterns for whatever you might want to make. Some of the most popular beginners’ projects are perfect for a college lifestyle — think of coasters, dishcloths and bikini tops — which can be easily completed in a single afternoon.

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Learning an instrument

While this hobby will end up requiring a lot of practice and consistency over a longer time period, learning an instrument could be a great way to acquire a lifelong skill and can be a fantastic socializing mechanism. A lot of us USC students probably grew up with some sort of elementary-school, “you’re-going-to-learn-the-trumpet-during-fourth-grade-and-like-it” type of program; why not revisit it and move into early adulthood with another way to express yourself?

USC also offers a multitude of beginning classes for some instruments, such as guitar, keyboard and even voice. Classes like “Beginning Pop/Rock Guitar” (MPGU 120), “Beginning Piano” (MPKS 150A) and a host of non-major individual instruction classes often still have spots open until the end of the add/drop period.

The Daily Trojan, however, takes no responsibility for any roommate-related noise complaints that arise from your saxophone squeaks or electric guitar misgivings.

Painting

Who doesn’t love a good Bob Ross tutorial, or enjoy seeing a middle-aged park patron with an easel set up at a popular viewpoint? With a set of acrylic paints and a few brushes, this could be you at the mere age of twenty-something-teen!

If you’re tight on space and don’t love the mess that can come with traditional oil or acrylic painting, good-quality sets of watercolor paints are often sold in small cases no bigger than your hand, with brushes that can hold their own water and eliminate a lot of hassle. Then, all you need is a sketchbook, and you could fit everything you need for a new painting in less space than a tote bag.

Model Building

We’ve all seen a model car on someone’s office desk, or an intricately placed bouquet of Lego flowers in a vase; brand name or not, the world of model building is more vast than meets the eye. If you’re searching for something decorative with a side of “I made that entire thing myself,” what could be better to show off in your space?

Compared to other hobbies, model building comes with the favorable feature of having written instructions for each project, especially helpful for those who would rather not be tied to a YouTube tutorial and, instead, unwind with music or a movie playing in the background. You’re welcome, multitaskers.

Cooking and Baking

To freshmen and sophomores thinking of living in an off-campus apartment next year: Do not underestimate the power of knowing how to cook and bake. Not only will those skills stay with you well past college, but treating cooking as an act of personal enjoyment before viewing it as a hunger salve or pre-Friday-night-pregame necessity will translate to a better relationship with food in general. There’s nothing to lose about being excited to bake something after class or work, and as your skills grow, the people around you will likely love it, too.

Innovate with the ingredients you remember from your parents’ or guardians’ cooking; explore different cultures’ cuisines to whittle down the tastes and flavors that speak to you most. Just remember before you start: Measure your ingredients precisely, don’t pour hot oil down the sink drain, and dear God, no metal utensils on that nonstick pan you just bought from Target. We tried to warn you.

But no matter what new hobby you choose to include in your 2024, don’t forget to really lean into it — enjoying personal leisure activities like these (as well as many others) are proven to be associated with better psychological and physical well-being, decreased symptoms of depression and even lower blood pressure, according to a study by the National Institutes of Health, for one. Don’t associate your hobby as a “time-waster” or nerdy or strange — even if other people don’t understand the level of comfort or joy it brings you. They’re just jealous that they don’t know how to play “Hot Cross Buns” on the recorder yet.