Hobbies and Connections

 The plan to move forward out of this nostalgia depression is still being formed. However, I have plans shortly to sell off some of my old hobbies to clear space and hopefully inspire change. Some of them I can't bear to part with yet, and I'm not sure if this will hamper my efforts to move on. The reason I can't move on from all of them boils down to the size of a collection and the value of the individual cards. I played Magic the Gathering for years, roughly thirteen years from 2008 until 2021 regularly, multiple times a week. Its probably been longer than that, but after 2021, the times played got more sparse. That being said, I have quite a few cards that are worth money, some hundreds of dollars. There are also a lot of memories attached to some of those cards that I'm not ready to move on from. For the time being, I have the cards packed away. 

Pokemon, which I was obsessed with as a kid back in 1999, I picked back up during the pandemic. It has always felt a bit hollow though. I was into Pokemon cards from 1999 until late 2000, so not very long at all. I do regret that a bit, but I was getting ready to enter high school and I can only imagine the trouble that hobby would cause me. High school was already difficult for me without something like that. I picked up the hobby again to try to rectify that I guess. Really though, there were no concrete memories associated with the cards like there are with my MTG cards. I will be selling off most of my Pokemon card collection, choosing only to keep my favorite ones. These have been packed away as well, and I will no longer buy any trading card game franchise. 

That leaves gaming as my last active hobby, but I want to stress that it will not take over what I do with my spare time. I have a PS4 with six games that I play regularly. I want to get outside more, whether that is hiking, biking, or skateboarding, I just want to be more active. I picked a decent time of the year to start this, with fall starting to move in. When winter comes, I imagine my free time will be spent with video games, but I want to learn a new skill as well, though I'm not sure what that is just yet. 

I've learned over the last year that physical objects for me at least, don't hold most of my memories that I long to come back. Its the people. The people that I made a connection with using those objects and games. That could explain why all of these things on their own only seem to bring a hollow happiness and why it feels different owning them this time around. The world has changed much just in the last twenty years. I will never be able to go back to those times or those feelings. Getting lost in those moments will never help me be happy in the present. Its not worth it to look back anymore.