New hobbies are exciting. Suddenly, we have something that makes us feel happy and fulfilled, and want to do all the time. Quickly, however, something that once interested you can turn into a huge burden. Hobbies can both be born and die in a surprisingly short amount of time.
cancerous-potato asked: What killed your interest in a hobby?
You can't force something like that.
"Music production. My god parents pushed me to sell my music as much as possible despite the fact I only had a few years under my belt and wasn't really good at it yet.
It stopped being a fun hobby of producing crazy things and uploading them to show my friends and became an unrewarding process of starting a project and scrapping it when I knew it wasn't even worth a dollar."
Gotta hate those kayaking cliques.
Giphy"I was getting in to whitewater kayaking and none of my friends or family had any interest in it. For obvious reasons it is dangerous to kayak gnar alone.
The people involved in kayaking clubs are the weirdest, most uncomfortable, strange power trip, passive aggressive people I ever met in my life. And I tried a few different groups. Plenty of nice people, but the group dynamics were awful.
I guess it wasn't meant to be."
It gets boring once it becomes work.
"After years and years of sewing gifts for children in my family and friends' kids, I finally launched an Etsy, then transitioned into IG and my own website.
It was stressful, customers were frustrating, custom orders were fun but could be problematic. Stock and supplies filled up our second bedroom in a small house. I had to be on my phone/computer/IG whenever I wasn't sewing. Collaborations were flaky.
It wasn't worth the stress and long hours to make very little after an entire year+ of work. Shut my shop down, gave most of my leftover stock away.
Tl;dr- turned my hobby into a business. Hated it."
Um...they said WHAT?
"I used to make cheese and cured meats. Like cheddar and prosciutto etc. I have a basement cheese cave, a curing chamber, humidifiers, dehumidifiers, temp controls, alllll of that.
I used to enjoy making it, aging it for months, then sharing at a big dinner party or something. Then people started, like, expecting me to make it. And would get pouty if I didn't share. Hey, sorry, that small Gouda is $25 in ingredients and 9 months aging, I'm not giving it away, I want to save it for myself this time.
Then someone close to me said I could give them the homemade stuff and go buy my own cheese from the store if I wanted more for myself. Annnnnd, I'm out. All the fun and joy of the process is gone so I've found new hobbies that are 100% mine alone."
That's so extra.
Giphy"I was really into comics growing up. Probably 15 years or so. Then they started CONSTANTLY restarting the universe, restarting the title, and doing major events that required massive tie-ins.
It just got to the point where you could not just read a fluid, consistent story about a character or team for longer than like 4 months."
Keep it drama-free.
"I used to do community theater in a small town. Just a lark really, but there was some real talent.
A group if us would put together a show every couple of months, often well received by audience members. Soon some of the actors and crew started to think they were something really special. Egos grew out of control. There was talk of "my art, as an actor".
People took themselves WAY too seriously. Took all the fun out of the whole thing."
Didn't even know that was a thing.
"Used to love baking. Then I moved to a high altitude. You can't bake the same at a high altitude as you do at a low one.
All my recipes that I had spent years perfecting were suddenly terrible. I would try to find high altitude recipes on line, but they were always still for a few thousand feet lower than I was, so even on specifically high altitude recipes I'd have to adjust for the altitude, and even with a billion guides I just never was able to get the hang of it.
It was worse than starting over from scratch, because at least when I first started I could follow a damn recipe. So I just quit. Maybe I'll get back into it whenever I move back closer to sea level."
That's when you know it's time to switch to Red Dead Redemption.
Giphy"I burned out on GTA Online because of a friend that was OBSESSED with it. I'd get game invites if I was playing something else or watching Netflix.
If we did play he'd spend up to an hour trying to exploit glitches to get more money, and maybe two or three missions afterward. I play video games to relax in my off time, and he turned it into a second job.
I ended up getting a PS4 and promptly refused to get Playstation Plus to avoid online entirely."
TRUE FACTS.
"Pretty much every hobby: The community.
Like, you find something that's fun to do, and you find other people who like that thing too, and it's great. But after a while it starts to 'congeal' for lack of a better word, and there start to be a lot of unwritten rules that define an in-group and an out-group and the "right" way to enjoy the activity. And then somebody comes up with a way to extract money from enthusiasts and it just keeps going downhill from there.
After a while, it seems like every new hobby becomes an elaborate performative activity where people buy the right things and do the activity in a particular way for the purpose of being seen by other people, to demonstrate to them that you're part of the in-group. The actual activity around which the hobby is based becomes secondary.
And of course it's an endless feedback loop that keeps escalating as more people get into the in-group and the people who are already there raise the stakes to maintain the exclusivity."
That's DISGUSTING.
"I joined a very large online forum for people involved in the hobby. It spawned a few "name and shame" secret forums where people could anonymous ridicule and insult other members. It went way too far.
People becoming "secret agents" and befriending other members to gain their trust and confidence, then come back to the secret forum to "spill the tea" about health issues, family problems, financial difficulties, etc... Posting personal information, photos of houses and cars, photos of kids and spouses to ridicule their appearance.
Screenshotting pics taken inside houses from social media accounts, zooming in to try and see prescription bottles, and other items in detail to make up theories and "lore" about targeted members. Making up insulting names for members. Even contacting employers, neighbors, and other people to try and cause trouble. Occasionally they would have random stuff mailed to a person.
It was really disgusting and actually ruined my interest in the hobby."