You suck all the dopamine out of something and move on leaving the drained husk of your former hobby behind. Hopefully the dopamine runs out before you put money into it.
I swear as soon as I put money into a hobby, I lose interest. I got a guitar I can't play, a hackRF I can't be bothered to relearn, a box of half built eletronics, an unknown amount of Raspberry Pis and Arduinos with no purpose...
Yeah I got into lockpicking a few years ago, figured out how to pick all the random master locks i had lying around the house, and immediately after spending like 250 dollars on some specialty, hard-to-pick locks, I lost interest. Still keep my lockpicking set in my car in case anyone locks themselves out of the house or something, but the dopamine i got from picking those first few locks is gone. On to the next thing.
This is something that has always interested me but I've never tried. Any recommendations on a set of picks to start with?
I got a cheap set off of amazon at the time, which worked fine, and it looks like someone has already provided a link to a more reputable business. Most sets will have the same core of tools in them, which will be the most useful, plus maybe some obscure shapes in there that serve a niche purpose.
If you're interested in getting into the hobby, there's a discord server called Lock Pickers United that ranks basically every lock in existence on difficulty, and will hand out "belts" a la martial arts, when you can show proof that you've picked a lock from different tiers. I never got very far but it seemed fun.
Same, I have a few locks I don't have the keys for and even broke into my friends car for them once.
Im not good at it but I can atleast pop open cheap locks no problem.
But I got so much Warhammer that needs painting! I have to like it or Shame Mountain won't erode.
yunohost is good at being set and forget for RPis that sit unused. I still haven't got around to setting up paperless-ngx but I've done the rest and it is useful…
Now don't ask me how long it's been since I said I'd set up a NAS
as a linux enthusiast and server hosting nerd myself. I bought like 400 dollars of hardware, installed fedora on it, immediately proceeded to not like fedora very much. And then it sat for about six months. On a whim i heard about debian 12 releasing, which had a new enough kernel for proper QSV support on modern intel and i immediately set it up in about a week or two, now using containers and relatively well organized file structures.
This is why I setup proxmox, makes messing with different distros very easy when they're VMs
proxmox seems cool, i'm more of a primitive guy myself though. Putting as little between me and my software running makes shit like the ESXI or EXSI whatever the fuck that stupid software is called a none problem.
It's less of a problem with open source stuff, but it can still go dead, and have weird feature changes, so meh.
As a person with no diagnosis of any type, I too feel confused by people only having ‘a few’ interests and hobbies. If my time were not so finite, and I had the financial means, I’d be pursuing a lot of random things
I find the world to be crawling with interesting things to learn about. From electric plugs, to coffee, to how computers work, etc. It always drives me insane that the average person doesn't seem to be remotely interested in learning much about how and why the world works..
Didn't know it could be an ADHD thing though.
That's why I love technology connection guy, I can just skim through his list of videos and find some weird things to watch about some random tech.
electric plugs
I thought that I was the only one... But it makes sense that other ADHD folks would too. Have a favorite plug? Mine's the CEE 7/4 (Schuko). It just has a lovely symmetry and thoughtful, safety-conscious design.
The UK plug seems to be the best engineered one, I'm partial to the French one, along the Schuko.
The UK plugs are pretty great too. Easy to wire and designed to have fuses. I felt much more confident wiring one of those for my in-laws than I ever would with a US plug.
Ok, I had to look at this and I definitely agree. It's much better than the US Type B plug which I'm always afraid I'll short out when a random piece of metal falls on it.
at the moment i'm partial to andersons, wonderfully versatile, modular, and scalable. You can get them ranging from itty bitty baby connectors, to big chungus giga connectors.
It's a very nice design. I don't like plugs, i think they're all bad tbh.
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
-Robert A. Heinlein
My ADHD interests: intensely researching a topic that has no prospect of financial reward and wanting to talk about it to people who don’t care
Not OP, but TTRPGs. Started after I finished BG3, and talked my friends into playing DnD, with me as a DM. Knew literally nothing, and hyperfocused for months learning as much as I could.
I've prepared a 70 page document for my players detailing every one of my 6 homebrew classes, 20 subclasses, 15 origins (races don't make sense in the setting), and some lore about our ASOIAF campaign (I could keep going for hours about all I've homebrewed).
We're all ready and rearing to go and I'm kind of... Already over it. I'm homebrewing vampire bloodlines ala dragonborn lineages and wild magic radiation and mutation systems on the side but those don't make sense in this setting, and it hurts.
Edit: the worst thing is, I do have people that would be interested in those homebrews, but they're my players and I don't want to spoil them!
Conlanging is great for this because you can make and abandon basic sketches of languages forever.
Don't forget waking up a month or two later and realizing that you no longer care about the subject you've been hyperfocusing on and now have no idea what to do with yourself until the next hyperfixation shows up.
Yup, that's me. Only have a handful of active interests at a time. But a couple of those are free floating interest slots that I'll swap out every month or few as I really dig into something new. And then everything else gets moved into passive interest territory, where I'm not seeking it out but can still relate or engage if it comes up again. So that's how I live with it.
Same for me. I actually have so little money that I barely do anything anymore but I still am interested in a bunch of stuff just unable to actively do it since I have little time and no money.
Yeah, this sounds about right. I think this is why other people (without ADHD) often identify me with only one or two of my special interests instead of the full variety of all those interests. The other day I had to introduce me in a certain setting to someone where everyone had to mention their hobbies as well. I was struggling at first how to cram so many hobbies in a short time or how to prioritize them. Then a friend, who was also there, said to me "Oh, you like to upload pictures on iNaturalist!" This is true, but I did not really feel seen because of all the other hobbies that seem similarly important!
Haha, username checks out I guess xD
Have not heard of this podcast yet, but will have a listen. Thanks! Usually I have problems paying attention to non-fiction podcasts. But I give it a try.
I can send you a dm regarding my iNat. Have my real name over there and don't wanna dox myself...
It's a good podcast, I recommend it to anyone who likes plants. The host is a non-traditional student who swears a lot, very New Jersey/New YorkChicago.
https://www.outsideonline.com/culture/books-media/botany-joey-santore-youtube-crime-pays/
Totally understandable, so do I.
Oh nice, I'm just listening to the first episode and yes, it is pretty easy to listen to :) Thanks again for the recommendation
Huh. I used to write notes to myself a few years ago when I was still in school and would get super drunk. "Look up modular synths," was one of my notes and I never went and actually did it. This is probably my calling to learn about them 🤔.
Me, autistic: "Huh, what are modular synths? I wonder what Pickle Junior meant by that."
Me, autistic, 9 months from now, probably:
I'd really suggest fiddling around in VCV rack before committing yourself to building anything for real. It's free too. Individual modules cost upwards of $300 at minimum and you need at least 10 of them to do the crazy generative stuff people are into.
I had a similar moment of confusion when I realized "normal" people have to put forth effort to think. Your brains aren't always on, always thinking, about everything? You don't always notice every little detail (though sometimes at the expense of the bigger picture)? How can you do one thing over and over again without getting bored? You just obey and believe things you're told? You can follow rules you don't personally understand a need for? You've been doing a thing the same way forever just because that's the way it's always been done?
Sometimes it's aggravating to me as it seems like other people are being intentionally obtuse, but other times I envy the ability to float through life, free of thoughts and therefore free of anxiety.
I feel like "free of anxiety" is a rather large assumption. I'm definitely riddled with anxiety but that doesn't mean a more neurotypical individual is free from that burden. We likely just deal with much more mental instability as a result of the ADHD firehose-like stream of consciousness exacerbating any already present sources of anxiety. :shrug:
Can you imagine how specialized you would be if you only had one interest? Like the example non-ADD person just into politics... They must know the name of every representative at every level from city to country where they are living, know the detailed history of the political parties, and have a deep knowledge of political movements and their history.
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It's why most people are heavily propagandized and proselytized from a very early age to make sports their hobby. Indeed, these people tend to have deep knowledge of their team's and their immediate opponent's histories, with background going back to specific matches half a century ago and impressive retention of numbers and statistics thereof and so on.
All this knowledge of course is absolutely useless politically (and often, socially), which is precisely the point.
Ehm no? What person or institution or organisation do you imagine going "harrr let's get kids into sports so that they don't bother to learn about politics harr!" exactly? Because it's for sure not schools that are doing that. Most schools even teach about how politics work even.
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Err, yes? Family and friends and massive amounts of peer pressure to belong. And Massive spending by the state towards such sports ofc.
Just because a government subsidises sports (for example for health benefits) does not mean there is some nefarious plot to keep the populace from being involved in politics
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The government building massive stadiums for people to watch sports is not for "health benefits". Cmon now. This is typical "bread and circuses" stuff.
And it doesn't have to be a "nyah nyah nyah" twirling mustache guy thing. Fact of the matter is that the rise of professional sports just so happened to correlate to the rise of the nation state.
You've crossed into conspiracy theory territory bud. It's not entirely implausible but it is getting in the direction of "out there."
i think ADHD is probably responsible for the bastardized version of "jack of all trades master of none"
That's my headcanon for it at least.
My mother used to say about my brother and I, "they aren't content with burning the candle at both ends, they also take a blowtorch to the middle."
My interests tend to rotate, thankfully. I try to decorate my room or have things that will physically remind me of old hobbies and get me to jump start them back to life.
I have one broad interest that manifests in many ways: I like to make things. From a D&D table, to a workbench, to glowing led hex panels, to making automated blinds from scratch, to cutting worm gears, to internal keyway cutters, to sex machines, to syncing up videos to said sex machines, to grind rails and ramps for skating, to gearboxes, to spool un-winders, to book presses, to rpi powered media centers, to pi arcades, to bed frames.....just to name a few.
As someone who switched meds, didn't sleep much for about 14 days and discovered modular synths: I'm in this picture and I don't like it.
Disclaimer: let's face it, I actually love it. Like others in this thread, I can't even imagine how boring I'd feel not discovering a completely new interest / hobby / aspect of life all the time.
Hell, I know so many people my age who simply seem to stagnate and are simply not interested in anything any longer, and I feel "protected" from that. Life is fucking exciting, let me try all the things!
There are definitely layers to this though, I have core interests that are more aligned with my personality, and I feel that governs how invested I am into each particular hobby. That doesn't keep me from having wildly varying interests, though.
ive never understood when my friends decline something because it "sounds boring" i just cant think that way at all
They feel the same about me when I decline the opportunity to get shitfaced drunk and banter over 17 games of "Mexican train dominoes" for the 59574th time.
wonder if this has anything to do with an inability to say youre not interested when someone starts talking to you about something (at least in my case because i perceive it as being rude and i absolute hate feeling like ive been rude) leading to the actual development of a larger range of interests
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NT: "So what are your interests?"
Me, inside: "Software development, compression algorithms, binary file processing, scripting in Bash and Powershell, web development, networking, homelab/selfhosting, household automation, 3D graphics and modelling (and a particular fascination with Geometry Nodes), shader programming, video game development, video games..."
Me, outside: "... ...I like computer? Like, all of computer?"