Hobby Blindness

It's not unusual for people with ADHD to have that flavor of time-blindness where there are only two settings: "all the time/right now" and "a million years/never."

It's only now, in my 40s and with years of Moth patiently reminding me that I can take a break from a hobby and still enjoy it, that I'm working out a framework for decision-making that doesn't involve throwing out everything I haven't used in the last month or keeping everything forever.

The framework is very simple. In the same way that I'm time-blind to the question of how long it's been since I partook of the hobby, I have to look at the hobby tools or materials blind to the expectations I would put on my activities.

The only question that matters is: how do I feel when I look at this stuff?

Do I feel inspired? Do I smile and think it'll be nice to get to that when I have a little more time? Even if I don't know when that will be, if it feels good, I know there's no harm in keeping it.

But if I look at it and I feel guilty, whether it's because of sunk costs or because I can't physically do it any longer without pain or even if I just no longer enjoy it and feel bad about that, then it's time to let it go.

Yeah, it's basically just "does it spark joy?" except I overthought it, but I need to do some overthinking and some framing or else I end up in Literal Survey Answer mode.

So far this has been working pretty well, but I'm always curious what works for other people!