Prior to this hobby, I kinda bounced around hobbies every six months to a year or so.
I'd get into something, get in crazy deep and go way overboard, learn everything I felt I needed to know in that hobby, and then when I felt I had exhausted that, I ended up moving on to something else. Some Examples
- Drones - I probably built a couple dozen drones in various configurations. Standard quads, vtail, hex, fixed wing, ranging from just a few inches across to 7'.
- Mechanical Keyboards - Built many, sold most of them to fund my next hobby: Offroading (I still use a IBM Model M as my daily driver though)
- Offroading - Been everywhere, done tons of the wacky trails. Hells Revenge, Engineers Pass, etc. Sad I don't live in mountains anymore.
- Home Labbing - I still maintain my servers, but it's more about daily service now, rather than trying to get on the bleeding edge.
The arcade hobby is the first one that's really
stuck. I
almost got into it back when I was in in High School, when I picked up a MKII cabinet locally, but even though I fixed it, I didn't get bitten by the "bug." I guess it didn't occur to me that I could just get more.
It started in Sept 2021 when my (now) Wife and I picked up a Tempest together.
I had no
fucking idea what I was doing, but my inability to fix it brought me to the community here, and with the help of the people here, I got it going. And it's stuck.
And if I had to consider why, I'd lay out the following reasons.
- A ridiculous amount of stuff to learn. Every system has its quirks. Every game is (mostly) something different, and fixing them is always an adventure. I'll never know everything when it comes to this hobby. Always something new to tool on.
- Limited Availability. In my previous hobbies, it was (somewhat) easier to just go and do what I wanted to do. If I wanted to build something, I built it. Trying to recover 40 year old machines is much harder to check things off my list when I have to wait for them to appear.
- Thrill of the Hunt - Folded into the above a little bit. The excitement of "Holy shit I never thought I'd see one of these pop up" never gets hold. (But it does suck when I don't always have the cash to burn!)
- Evergreen Enjoyment. I really enjoy the fixing of the machines, but I also enjoy the playing of them when they're done. I love my game room, and how it's expanded in the few short years I've been here. I play the games every day. Each new game I fix and bring in adds to the variety.
I have a feeling I'll be doing this for a long,
long time to come. My wife has commented that she's never seen me so deeply involved in a hobby, or been interested in one topic for so long. Again, it's only been a few years, for me, but I have a feeling my kids are gonna benefit from one hell of a gameroom when they show up
