Feeling Fine

It’s been about two weeks since I finished the build of the Master Grade F91, and yet I still haven’t followed up with a photoshoot.

Full disclosure - I have some photos, enough to do at least one short post (which I’d have to follow up with at least one more containing action poses and the like). But I still haven’t written that post, and right now I have no interest in doing so.

At first I thought I was just feeling a case of Gunpla burnout. It happens to pretty much everyone from time to time. Last time it happened to me was last year, where it lasted for about a month. No big deal.

I decided to mix it up and focus on other hobbies. I got a subscription to Xbox Game Pass and started looking for cool stuff to play. I got through one big AAA shooter, and afterwards I felt empty and hollow, and that I had wasted my time. My desire to play further games cratered.

I did a bit of soul searching to figure out what was going wrong. Am I unhappy? Am I depressed? I don’t think so. Case in point - this past weekend was extremely memorable. Highlights include:

  • Having a night out with a good friend who I haven’t seen very much since becoming a parent.
  • Taking the kids to a birthday party at one of those big indoor play centers - and getting a chance to play the role of Big Kid, chasing them and following them through every ball pit, tube, and slide.
  • Sitting on the couch on Sunday morning, putting my arm around my wife while she read, and watching my kids play together in another room. No phone, no games, no writing, no reading. Just being present in the “here and now” with my family, and enjoying a moment of relative peace and quiet.
  • Taking the kids to the local pool for the first time, and pigging out on snacks when we got home.

The common thread among all these activities is that they were all about spending time with loved ones, without being distracted by modern technology and/or pop culture. That’s not to say that the entire weekend was some sort of detox from the modern world - I still spent time on my phone, and I did do some gaming. But the highlights of the weekend - the parts that I will remember and cherish - are the moments where I avoided that stuff.

And it wasn’t just this weekend. Last month I took a weekend trip with Mrs. Wolfe to Kellerman’s Mountain Home. We had such a good time that we spent most of the next few (stressful) weeks asking each other when we could go back. Again, we didn’t completely detox from the Internet (it was kind of impossible considering that was the same weekend that Roe V Wade was struck down), but nevertheless we enjoyed being able to worry about no one else but each other in a beautiful, remote (and once again quiet) getaway.

So I think the problem isn’t so much that I’m down and out. Rather, the “problem” is that I’ve been able to slow down enough to (re?)connect with the people in my life on a very deep level - and that this experience is generally far more enriching and rewarding than playing a game, binge watching a show, or yes, even building a model kit.

But as good as this has been for me, it also leaves me with a lot of questions. If being connected to friends and family feels better than engaging with my hobbies, does that mean they’re truly my hobbies? Or are they simply things I do because I’ve been conditioned by modern pop cultural forces into consuming content without stopping to think about or appreciate it?

This resulted in a miniature existential crisis, but thankfully I thought my way through it. Here are my ultimate takeaways about, well, everything I’ve brought up here:

  • Spending time with family and friends is great. It may in fact be the best use of one’s free time. But like everything in life, moderation is key. Just like I needed a break from my hobbies, this introvert will eventually need a break from other people at some point in the future.
    • The same is true in reverse. Hobbies are great and all, but you shouldn’t allow them to consume you to the point where they actively keep you from interacting with others.
  • There is something to be said about pop culture turning us into mindless consumers. If and when something stops being enjoyable, we absolutely should take a break from it, without feeling a sense of guilt or shame that we’re no longer “keeping up” with everything coming out. Later on one can reassess if the break should be temporary or permanent, and we shouldn’t feel guilt over whatever decision we make. Life is too short to spend our free time doing something we don’t like when we have a choice to do something else.
    • This is easier said than done. I have absolutely continued to play games long after I grew tired of them, and I’ve purchased Gunpla that I didn’t actually need out of some misplaced belief that there’s something wrong with going more than a month or two without buying a new kit.
  • The sunk cost fallacy is real, and some people - myself included - have a hard time fighting it.

For now, I think I’m going to continue trying to spend more quality time with the family, as well as (finally) getting to some books that have been on my nightstand for months upon months. I’ll certainly get to the F91 photoshoot sooner rather than later, and I’m positive I’ll have another build knocked out in August. But other than that, who knows what I’ll do with my free time? I can only hope it will be enjoyable and mentally nourishing.