Rants and Ramblings: random commentary about culture, media, politics, technology and whatnot.

regrets: hobbies

As I type this, Jim Coudal is giving a closing talk at An Event Apart about creativity and enthusiasm and channeling that into your work. As an example, he showed a short film by Steve Delahoyde about a guy who’s lept from hobby to hobby, only to quickly lose enthusiasm.

I think my favorite part is the man’s misguided obsession with model railroads — or, rather, his misguided obsession with finding the perfect railroad engineer’s cap before he can really get started with his model railroad project. That’s something I can identify with to some degree: focusing on one related thing that’s totally beside the point as a way to secretly procrastinate on actually doing the larger thing.

Coudal used the video as a way to segue into a discussion about how these kinds of random obsessions can actually be valuable. Certainly, that misguided project may not have gone anywhere, but if it offered an opportunity to learn something new or try something different, maybe it’s a good thing. And maybe that failed venture will eventually lead to something else.