{"id":80275,"date":"2023-02-24T03:00:01","date_gmt":"2023-02-24T08:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=80275"},"modified":"2023-02-23T20:11:36","modified_gmt":"2023-02-24T01:11:36","slug":"you-may-call-it-interest-cycling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2023\/02\/24\/you-may-call-it-interest-cycling\/","title":{"rendered":"You may call it “interest cycling”, but I call it “normality”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tom Knighton<\/a> on what is apparently called “interest cycling” in hobbies and other leisure-time activities:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

An article from a late 1950s issue of Model Railroader<\/em> magazine showing a very<\/em> small HO scale layout plan. The author later admitted that it’s really too small to do much with after it’s built — without some expansion — but the building can take more time than you might expect and you’d need to develop some new skills to do it properly.<\/p><\/div>\n

Something many ADHD people do \u2014 and maybe others, I don’t know \u2014 is what I call “interest cycling”.<\/p>\n

Basically, I get insanely hyperfocused on one thing, devoting almost all of my time to this One Thing for weeks at a time, then suddenly stop for whatever reason and then jump onto something else.<\/p>\n

As a result, I never become truly great at anything. What’s more, since many of these areas of hyperfocus \u2014 one article called them obsessions, and with plenty of cause \u2014 require money, I end up needing<\/em> to spend large quantities of money that I really can’t afford to spend.<\/p>\n

But, it’s a need.<\/p>\n

And it’s a problem. For a lot of us<\/a>.<\/p>\n

See, I have obligations that surround some of my interests. I’m a group leader for the local chapter of an organization I’m part of, for example, that requires not just me to teach a class once per week, but also to advance my own knowledge.<\/p>\n

I still teach the class because others are counting on me to do so, but I haven’t been devoting much time to the rest of it, and I should since there are some tangential benefits to what I’m trying to accomplish here at The Knighton Experiment<\/em>. Sure, some of it isn’t, but that’s just part of the game, so to speak.<\/p>\n

What’s worse is that, so far as I’ve been able to find, there aren’t a lot of ways to combat this.<\/p>\n

Which suggests that I’m kind of doomed to go through this cycle for the rest of my life.<\/p>\n

Now, there are upsides. I mean, there aren’t many people who could detail both how to build a chest of drawers and a 14th-century transitional plate harness, for example. While I can’t necessarily build either with a high degree of proficiency, I at least know what’s involved.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In my own case, those sound like perfectly normal interests — I share both of them — although since my income dropped precipitously several years ago, I don’t spend money as Tom still does. What I have done, however, is to accumulate future stocks of books on those topics I typically cycle through over time so that when the urge strikes I can at least ameliorate some of the need by reading about rather than actively engaging in the hobby\/interest\/activity. That might be the difference between Tom’s concern and my experience … I cycle among a number of interests, but not brand new ones all the time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tom Knighton on what is apparently called “interest cycling” in hobbies and other leisure-time activities: Something many ADHD people do \u2014 and maybe others, I don’t know \u2014 is what I call “interest cycling”. Basically, I get insanely hyperfocused on one thing, devoting almost all of my time to this One Thing for weeks at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,849,73],"tags":[1159,951,139],"class_list":["post-80275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-personal","category-randomness","tag-materials","tag-modeltrains","tag-psychology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-kSL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80275"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80275\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80290,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80275\/revisions\/80290"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}