My entire life I have been a definitive hobby hopper.
Think I am really enjoying something fun and new I have taken up? Get ready for it to last a solid month… if that.
Believe me, I’ve done it all.
I even had a balloon art phase… which mentioning this while writing from my childhood bedroom that very much still has 1000s of balloons stocked away in it… is tempting me to start again.
See what I mean? Hobbies come and go purely based on when I get this random spark of a drive to do them.
Yes, I love Lego, and painting, and reading, and games, and blah blah blah, but never continuously and ESPECIALLY never consistently.
Due to this, I often find myself feeling very personally guilty. I want to sit back and feel well rounded… and then I just feel like a horrible quitter with the attention span of a fruit fly.
In an effort to give myself more grace, I have since taken a look back at my very long list of hobbies and it made me realize that I am well rounded after all.
Even if I am not actively participating in my hobbies that I enjoy and need to take some hiatuses from them here and there, I am still someone who enjoys those things so deeply! More importantly to me personally, I am still picking up new skills and experiences from doing them.
I can say that I’m a birdwatcher, or an amateur piano player, or even a top-notch balloon dog maker. I can take pride in the inconsistent BUT STILL EXISTENT parts of me, because that is exactly what they are.
So, if you are like me, a notorious hobby hopper if you will, I want you to know that there is absolutely no shame in it. Find your niche, or NICHES! Try one hobby once and then send it to the hobby graveyard forever, or maybe pick it up on and off like a decade-long situationship.
Just have fun! Don’t waste time getting caught up in the hobby-inspired imposter syndrome or feeling like you aren’t “hobbying” as you should as I so often did.
I fear the balloons have been pulled back out…. no shame.
aud’s hobby graveyard:
| Scrapbooking | Made a title page and then realized I was not built for being covered in glue stick residue or artsy enough to make piecing together junk from my uneventful middle school life look good. |
| Yarn flower making | Parents kept getting mad about forks going missing…. totally was not stockpiling yarn flowers made with forks in my room or anything. |
| Calligraphy | I was just, in all seriousness, way too awful at it. |
| Stop motion | So time-consuming and for what!? |
| Juggling | Once again… just way too awful at this. What business did I have trying to juggle? |
| Hacky Sack | Lost every single hacky sack every single time. Also… you can only kick a bag of beans around for so long before getting bored. |
| Ventriloquism | No matter how hard I try, I CANNOT do it. I wanted to be Darci Lynne so bad. |
| Embroidery | Wait, I need to take this one out of the graveyard… |
| Antkeeping | Technically never started this one since I couldn’t convince my parents to let me get any ants. |
| Gymnastics | NOT flexible. Ate it once trying to do a back handspring (Audney’s version) and said OKAY goodbye! |