The Hobby-go-Round, or: Why Can’t I Complete Anything?

Does anyone else go in and out of interests or hobbies? Is this a common/natural thing for people to do? I’m asking because I found myself to be an addictive personality while somehow simultaneously having the attention span of a gnat…

I’ll throw myself completely into a thing (new, old, hobby, craft, job, paid, unpaid, whatever) and I’ll get really, really into it. Totally lose myself, completely consumed with the thing for months maybe. It’s all I talk about, all I read or study, all I do is that one thing.

 Then all of a sudden, it’s like a switch flips and suddenly I’m off it. I might be off it for years, or it could come back around in rotation. I say this last bit with hope as I’ve been put off with Outlander for some reason right now. I still love the thing (Outander in this case), and I have every intention of picking it back up. But for some reason, it’s just “off.” Another example – about 6 months ago, I simply quit comic books. Hell, probably longer than that because I can’t even remember the last trade back I bought.

There are only two things that haven’t been deprecated either by time or overindulgence and that’s Saga and Avatar the Last Airbender. Doesn’t matter what’s going on or how I’m feeling, those things make me calm and smile every single time. LoTR, Buffy, and GoT can’t even do that!

Is this normal? Is this what people mean when they say their “all-time favorite” series? As in all-time, all-day, all-life hands down the favorite?

It also makes me nervous for future projects or interests… will D&D fade away from me, too?

I also believe this is why I never finish anything. Now, on canvas or paper, I can finish projects. I love finalizing an artwork, admiring the passion put into a piece or being able to get it just where I wanted it to be. But everything else seems to fall flat.

My question then becomes – do we just have certain lots in life? I mean, I LOVE scrapbooking, but they never get completed. Knitting, too, but have yet to put on a completed piece (it’s cold now and I’m kicking myself over it). The question is, ought we should stick to the things we know? Should I not just be a pencil/paper gal and give up on the pie in the sky dream of a huge luxurious scrapbook autobiography to give to my great-grand nieces? Not pigeonholing, here – by all means everyone should try every form of media out there and get to expressing themselves!

What I’m actually asking is how can I not have the same expectation for a knit creation as I do for a pencil/paper piece and why do I feel poorly when knit things go unfinished?

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