I don’t understand people who actively and constantly pursue the same interest over extended periods of time: scrapbookers, sports fans, model builders, movie enthusiasts, it doesn’t matter. If you can stay interested in a topic, continuously, for years on end, you puzzle me.
As a for instance, I occasionally build and paint models for a tabletop game. I’ll get interested in it for a month or two and then I’ll wander away and do something else. Lately, I’ve been listening to a podcast by people who paint, build, play and talk about this game constantly. They play the game multiple times per week, then spend another few hours talking about the games they played and strategies and tips. Every week. For months and years on end.
Or baseball! I enjoy watching the games and talking about them and reading about the history, but only for a few months. There are people who dedicate significant portions of their memory space to memorizing stats for their teams and they’ll also keep abreast of what other teams are doing as well! Gotta know the competition after all. And they’ll follow through the whole season!
The way my brain works, I throw myself bodily into a hobby and soak up every aspect of it until I’m completely and utterly sick of the subject and then I put it on the shelf for a year. This, of course, makes me a joy to talk to when I’m in the middle of a hobby, since I will be unable to talk about anything else, even when I know better.
It’s the perseverance of the thing that I find unnatural. You can’t surround yourself with one thing all year! Drop it and move on. There’s new things to do and find and play with and create. Go crazy! Make glass cats or paint Tyranids or write a book or learn karate! And then do something completely different the next day.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to learn the history behind cream stouts.
-D-
