Burnt out with collecting?

gelkster

560Heliport said:

SumoLego said:

gelkster said:

I'm about to dismantle everything, get rid of shelves & call it a day.

I'd be happy to make a special trip out to both help you break everything down and haul it away.  No charge!

Oh no you don't! I'm closer! 😆😆😆


I will def. consider it. My kids arent ready to let go yet (mostly Star Wars & City) but I'm literally right now breaking down my Technic sets & shifting focus to my gameroom/arcade games. Admittedly I hop from one hobby to another but it feels right this time.

JudgeChuck

It has been interesting reading about different people's experiences with "burn out". Personally, I am definitely nowhere near that, but I have calmed down a lot, from when I first came out of my DA, about 6 years ago.
I am far more selective when buying sets and tend to be focusing on selected, more expensive, sets overall (Modulars, other Creator Expert / 18+, Ideas) as I have more than enough cars, trucks etc. to populate my small Lego city (though I am going to get a few of the 2020 Deep Sea Explorers sets) and I have nearly all the iconic SW sets that I would like (I finally have an AT-AT!). The only series that I am still "completion-ist" about is Minecraft and I just need the two sets from this year to keep up to date.
Like most people, my main issues are with display and storage space, as I only have a small study and cupboard to keep everything in, but I'm just about managing at the moment!
Looking into the future, I am definitely looking forward to a time when I can have more space to build and display a lot more, but that is definitely a pipe-dream at the moment, with a young family!

SumoLego

JudgeChuck said:

... is Minecraft and I just need...

Heh heh ... just...

Music to my completionist ears!

catwrangler

It's fascinating to see that so many of us feel this way. I got back into collecting in a big way in 2016, and for that year and 2017 I bought a LOT. It was a great distraction from gradually encroaching illness, though an intense bout of sorting barely scratched the surface of the disorganised brick backlog. Late 2017, my mum downsized (filling my attic with items in that annoying category of "worth a bit too much to just give away, but not worth a life-changing amount of money, individually or collectively", i.e. Stuff You Mean To Ebay Sometime) and my health collapsed.

Spent much of 2018/19 in hospital and/or working on my first book, so clearing the attic of Ebayables to allow for the great sorting opus never happened, only for Covid-19 shielding to make the job pointless as I'd have no ability to post stuff out/have buyers collect from the house. 

More generally, I find I've overestimated how much free time/energy I have, but also my inclination to MOC - as a kid and teen that was my favourite thing, but as a perma-tired adult I seldom have it in me. I think a lot of hobbies can be like that - it can take time to notice that the centre of gravity has shifted with age. I'm the same about videogames - I was never terribly good at them, but have less time and patience as I get older, and I've recently had the blessed realisation that I hate motion control and am not going to irritate myself any further trying to get the hang of the Wii. I'm starting to realise that managing your hobbies and free time is a lot like editing: it's as much about what you remove as what you put in, and often removing some elements frees others up.

So my instinct is to buy the Haunted House, which i basically my dream set, and bow out of collecting. If I spend the next year in an unprecedented frenzy of sorting, and the year after that in glorious MOCing, I'll leave myself the option of acquiring more bricks for specific projects, but I think this might be it for me. I could picture myself buying the odd sub-£30 set in the future as a treat, but I also increasingly picture myself selling some old sets from themes that aren't where my heart is these days... but, you know, sorting first. 

It's funny that for a lot of us, this seems to have been at least partly triggered by the spectacular glut of really good sets!