Whether it's a hobby, an addiction or a job, these people reveal the sad truths behind having to quit something they love.
No More Legos
I used to love LEGOs, I’d spend months in school saving up my lunch money so I could afford to buy the nice sets. I’d finally buy them at the end of the year and build them and sometimes even mix and match to make whole new structures myself. I had them all on display in my and my siblings’ room until my mother decided one day that they might collect dust and she’d just put them all in plastic bags. She didn’t cover them with the bags she just shoved them all into one big plastic bag breaking most of what I spent years building in the process. I was never attached to physical items after that, and I never played with LEGOs since then. Source
Small Hobby Circles
Toxic people in small hobby circles. Them and the ones who are over-obsessed with it. I mean shit, I just want to do this two evenings a week after work. I don’t really want to be the best in the world at it, I just want to have some fun and make some friends. But for some people, you’ve gotta have your entire life revolve around it, your entire friend group must come from this hobby, you have to talk about it in every social situation, among every acquaintance, and insist they try it too, and anybody that isn’t as intensely into it as you are is just in your way, and you can look down on them. Really burns you out on hobbies, doesn’t even matter what the hobby is, it seems there’s always some hardcore group of nut-jobs who spoil it. Source
Mindless Work
I used to love developing things in my spare time. Tinkering around with my raspberry pi, making games, reading books about technologies I’m interested in, following all the latest frameworks…Then I got a job as a developer. Loved it at first but then the stuff I enjoy (actually developing new things) slowly got overshadowed by the stuff I hate (writing test scripts, writing documents, fixing incredibly frustrating bugs for systems I didn’t write, dealing with clients, anything infrastructure related, dealing with bad, weird lazy code and dealing with third party companies who make shitty bespoke systems) and it’s just associated with being such a chore it’s the last thing I want to do when I come home. Source
Keep Playing
Music. I think I’m just not creative enough. I’ve played guitar since I was a kid and muddled my way around a keyboard and DAWs here and there, but I’ve never been able to output anything that I would want to listen to, which kind of sucks because I can’t honestly say I’m passionate about anything else the way I am about music. Source
Good For You!
I used to love smoking. I was at a pack a day for 13 years. I was diagnosed with a blood disease recently and my doctors had a real come to Jesus talk with me. I haven’t smoked in 26 days. Its been surprisingly easy. That first week was a rough ride though. Source
Relax Man
My inability to do anything in moderation… I have so many hobbies I’ve quit because I take them waaaay too serious and then either burnout from “researching” it 8 hours a day, or realize that it’s turning into an addiction and quitting before it takes over my life. Source
This Is The Worst
Being paid to do it. Some passions work out great as careers. Some are best separate from bosses/clients/deadlines/bills/taxes. When work kills something you love, it kills a big of your soul with it. Source
Learn How To Drive Folks
Road Rage made me quit Cycling. I live in a big city and I used to ride my bike everywhere, I even delivered full time on my bike as a main job. I’m not one of those reckless cyclists, I always ride safe and never go too fast, I pretty much make it a point to ride reasonably without being too careless. I’ve never gotten complaints about speed or anything while working almost 2 years on a bike. However, No matter what you do, you will encounter someone who has a problem with you simply because you are on a bike. They will honk at you, use their car as a weapon, try to side swipe you, yell out things at you, or in some cases, pin you between their car and a parked car and try to fight you. You can brush it off sometimes, other days it gets to you. I applaud people who always seem to brush it off every time it happens, but my patience is just wearing thin. Even if it’s not road ragers, the amount of people who text and drive is really high, it’s scary.
I used to ride my bike a lot. Everywhere. Now I do a lot less because the hassle of road ragers and distracted drivers is just too much extra stress for me. The only way I’d go back to cycling is if I had access to an off road trail or something. Unfortunately I live in a big city so I just walk more; it’s pretty fun. Source
Terrible
Being an academic/researcher. Shit pay, funding cuts, slow bureaucracy, cut-throat community, etc. I loved being a scientist and working in a lab, but once you get over the honey moon phase, it really sucks. You are toiling away in a lab doing manual labour days on end. But at the end of it, money was the real killer. What killed it was my inability to afford a mortgage, settle down properly, and seeing the end. As I’ve said before, I know several people in my field who have had their funding cut so they’ve had to look for jobs else where. The lowest point for me was when I was eating 2x meals a day and haven’t taken more than a long weekend off in two years. As much as I loved science and research, I would like to be able to eat 3 meals a day and sleep well for a change. Source
Sacrifices
Having a child and a full time job means I can no longer play MMO games. Mostly MMO games come down to time spent = progression, and with a 2 year old I’m just not able to dedicate the hours per week (or day) that I used to.
Now it’s not a bad trade, quite the opposite in fact. I probably spent an unhealthy amount of time playing WoW amongst others because I didn’t have a fulfilling home life. I’m much happier now, but do occasionally miss those sorts of games. I mostly play FPS games now so I can hop on for a few rounds when I get a couple of hours, and not be at any real disadvantage if I don’t play every night for hours at a time. Source
You Can Do It
Anxiety. My agoraphobia has ruined everything I’ve ever loved or made it hard to even enjoy anymore, even little things like going to restaurants, chilling with friends going to concerts, movies and road trips. I haven’t done these things in years. If anyone else is like me and haven’t found your way back into the world, I wish you the best of luck.Source