This probably comes to a shock to anyone that knows me well, but I have a lot of hobbies. I have more hobbies or projects that most people even know of. I’m not just talking things like “watching TV” or “playing video games” - though those do count, I’m talking about activities that a bit more hands on and either have an end goal or continuous goals to achieve that give me that dopamine hit and then I can move on to the next goal. Typically this is seen in career settings, which is fair, but I’ve never been one to have a one-track-mind when it comes to my goals. Some people think that you’d be wasting time and energy by not monetizing your hobbies with an end goal either being a career or a “side hustle.” However, in a lot of fields and industries, you have to be damn good at what you’re doing and somehow either fill a niche that isn’t already filled, or punch through the noise, get lucky, and go viral to have any semblance of success. When it doesn’t happen overnight, it suddenly isn’t worth it to those people, and they go back to focusing on whatever is making them money, most likely in a “career” that they don’t like in a field they didn’t go to university for.
Have you ever met someone with no hobbies? Are you one of those people? I mentioned watching TV as counting in that, and that’s okay to admit. It gives you something to connect to and interact with, but most importantly lets you interact with others by related to a similar thing. Interacting with someone with no hobbies results in a dry conversation, but also just kind of confounds me when I come across it. I know someone who willingly admits to not have any hobbies or interests, other than their kids. They have multiple kids, of various ages. While I know that having kids is obviously huge part of a parent’s life, and rightly so, it just makes me feel a bit sad knowing someone isn’t excited about anything else in their life. No movies, no TV shows, no games, no cooking, no hiking, no sports (other than watching their kids play). Maybe someone’s response to my confoundedness is that “they were just born to be a parent,” which I wholeheartedly disagree with. Everyone should establish themselves outside of any dependence on another person. That can be said for partners/spouses as well. Maybe that’s the jaded part of me speaking, as someone who has spent most of my life as a single person. I think it’s important for anyone.
I’m on the other end of that coin though. I have too many hobbies. Which I ultimately think is good and keeps me sane, happy, and fulfilled without relying on other people. However, the reason I’ve felt the urge to write this is because I’ve been piling on more and more projects that I want to complete or continue working on with more focus, with not a whole lot of them getting completed. Just look at the things I list on my website of projects I’m a part of, and each of those have sub-projects I’m working on for each of them. I will get the urge to work on something one day, make progress, but then the next day instead of working to finish it up, I will get motivation to work on something completely different.
I was never one to struggle with focus problems growing up. I almost always could sit and work on something with full focus and finish it. It wasn’t until college that something changed, and I’ve been having some resemblance of ADHD symptoms more and more. I’ve read about how that is more and more common in the digital age and for my age group. However, I also read it can be a result of a traumatic event, which I can trace back to a similar traumatic event that most likely caused my celiac disease to activate as well: a bad breakup. Except it was a different breakup. My body does not handle trauma well, apparently!
Anyway, back to my many projects. I recently launched a new podcast, called Galaxy Bound, however my previous podcast (Among the Noise) is still technically running, just on a bit of hiatus. Part of that is due to me focusing on other things, part of it is due to my co-host doing the same. But now with two podcasts to host and produce, I’m a bit stretched thin on my bandwidth for doing that, but at the same time I really enjoy doing them both and want to keep doing both, rather than just shut down one. In addition to that, I’ve got my music project Grey Harbor, which I fully intended to work on a lot more after the release of my latest song back in 2023, but I temporarily moved in with my parents and put that (and the podcast) on hold, and I’ve been struggling to find the motivation to get back to writing for that with how much effort goes into getting the new podcast up and going.
Then on top of that, I have JKHub.org, the gaming website I “inherited” from a friend who disappeared that has a huge community but is expensive to keep running. I sometimes make youtube videos for that community, maintain the website, write tutorials, and make mods for the game myself occasionally. I’ve been working behind the scenes to completely recreate the current website from scratch in PHP and JavaScript, because right now it runs a software that costs an insane amount of money, which is coming out of my pocket most months because donations from the community are nearly 0 these days. It’s been fun to learn how to make the website with help from chatGPT when I get stuck, but that has been a huge undertaking. A little test run I made to fill a need in a completely other random niche community, I launched DeltaStyles.com with that new website, which is a place for users to submit and download their “skins” they made for an app called Delta Emulator. It has been a huge help in testing my site for a pretty hefty chunk of people, because using it for JKHub will be about triple the traffic and use so I want to make sure it’s viable. I’m actually using it on this blog now too! Speaking of this blog, that counts as one of my projects as well. I originally made this blog with the intention to write like once a month, but it took a huge backseat when I went through another traumatic event. Though most people will say to “write when you’re down,” I have found that I am better off not subjecting the world to my depraved and depressed thoughts. It’s better to grieve in silence, and write in retrospect.
Outside of all of that, I play video games in my free time. Often that involves playing with friends too, which is a huge part of socializing and catching up with them, but is also entertaining. We started recording some our play sessions and editing down into videos which is fun, but that also takes a lot of time and effort to do. When we’re not playing games online, we try our best to get together in person of course, which is us taking part in hobbies together. I've been trying to get back into reading books as well. I read two books last year which was a huge accomplishment considering I hadn't read a book in many years. I'm trying to make my way through the new Star Wars High Republic novels, which have been excellent so far. Along with that, I get inspired to write my own book too, which is a project I've been brainstorming for nearly a decade now but hasn't gotten past planning and outlines.
Then I also work a full time job. Though I like my job, I can’t consider it “doing what I love” really. I work in IT, and while I love technology and learning new things about it and seeing the latest new gadgets and whatnot, my current job is really quite simple and rarely gets me to scratch the itches I get with that side of me. That’s a huge part of why all of these other hobbies and projects are so important to me. Would I love to have Galaxy Bound as my full time career? Definitely. But it’s not realistic to drop everything and pursue something like that. I’d love for the podcast to take off and suddenly make enough money to sustain my way of life. But it doesn’t, and I can’t expect it to.
So, that’s my life right now in a nutshell. Overwhelmed by my own hobbies. Ultimately, I think it’s a great problem to have, rather than to actually be bored all the time. I don’t think I can be physically or mentally bored, which can be a problem. I do struggle to sit in silence these days. A lot of that just stems from going through bad breakups, which devastated me to the point of not being able to function without breaking down and thinking about nothing else but it. The first time around I was still in college, and having 2 roommates that were my best friends to talk to and hang out with 24/7 saved me that time, but the next time I had to figure it out on my own. So I drowned myself in new hobbies, projects, and watching content. Maybe if I end up getting lucky enough to start a family of my own, I’ll go back to feeling normal. But in the meantime, this is how I survive.