I have too many interests.
I want to spend time:
- Making a game
- Simracing
- Making music
- Spending time with the kids
- Boardgaming
- Videogaming
- Reading comic books & Sci-Fi
- Wingfoiling
- Biking
- Paddleboarding
- Archerying
- Drawing
- Playing old games I never got around to on what are now “retro” platforms
- Cooking
- Organizing and fixing stuff up around the house
- Making pottery
- Swimming
- Writing (Resume stuff, novel, leadership/game design book)
- Blacksmithing
- Learning arbitrary new stuff
- Getting in better shape
I mean, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. And I know that everyone’s got a huge variety of hobbies. And one thing that’s different, is that more than most people, I have time.
I don’t take that for granted at all. But what it causes is this kind of persistent analysis paralysis and inability to focus on one thing and go deep to the degree that’s necessary for me to improve at anything. And sometimes, worse, that analysis paralysis prevents me from doing ANY of these things out of a weird kind of FOMO that I might pick something and then have an opportunity to do something better.
And I think that served me alright when the kids were small, or time was more scarce. But now, I have a bit of time where I could “go deep”, and find myself constantly pulled in different directions. There’s another bad impulse, which is, “I’ll do this when I have it all set up “right”.” Which sometimes is “the right gear”, which is almost always the incorrect impulse. Do the thing, get better to the point where you’re limited by the gear, then change the gear. But “new gear” feels like progress, and it often serves as a proxy for real progress. This is bad, and I’ve come to be better at recognizing it in myself.
But in any case, the thing is, it’s too much. That whole list of shit above? No one could be great at all that stuff. No one could even be competent at most of that stuff simultaneously. It’s just too much. Getting good at any two or three of those things would be the work of a lifetime.
I love getting “competent” at things, though, and I like that I’ve had the opportunity to dabble in a LOT of things, and become … not “fluent”, but maybe “conversant” in a ton of weird shit. But I would like to get better at a few things – probably making music (though narrowing it down between guitar and generalized music production is hard), and getting in better shape are the two things that I’d like to focus on the most that aren’t “explicitly spend time with friends and family”.
Maybe that’s just the goal in 2024. To figure out how to put the rest of things *aside* for a year, and just focus on those two things.