For me that is writing poetry and making music for myself, which I randomly stumbled upon after having had so many other hobbies in the past besides programming
- sports is an obvious one. Bonus points for team sports where you'll get a different community / social circle for free
- as others suggested music is great way of playfully easing into different activities. A fun start would be Melodics ( https://melodics.com ). If you'd like to keep it close to programming take a look at Max/MSP. Play around with a software synth, or get a hardware one like Korg's entry level offerings. If you'd like to move up to advanced levels, take a look at Ableton Live + Push, which is a very play- AND powerful way of learning a DAW.
I’m speaking to myself, BTW. I have spent a good portion of my life of explaining it to others and questioning it myself. I started programming in the 80’s though, and I had to fight through a wall of people with the mindset that computers were inherently “evil” and treated with high suspicion because they were not commonly understood. Yes, I grew up in a backwater.
Do all people who paint water colours also have some other totally different unrelated hobby they are just as passionate about, like motorcycle restoration? I'd wager not.
For me, running became a sort of "hobby" as such - I guess you could call that "sport". What were the other things you were thinking about at school when you "played it safe"? Never too late to learn/relearn things.
Digital signal processing and music for example.
