Changes To Ones Hobby As One Matures...

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I don't neccessarily mean changing the hobby in itself, but changes of how one adjusts over time within the hobby as one matures.

Let me give an example or two from my two hobbies and how I have changed over time.

Model Railways.
I started when I was very young... Probably a year old? No idea! Plastic push along toy trains . Fun!
Then came electric model trains from the age of six onwards... 00 gauge.
With a few trials of other gauges and scales, I still concentrated in 00 gauge... I went from collecting what I liked the look if from age six to my teenage years, then I concentrated on the Great Western Railway (GWR), then I put them foe sale, the GWR and B.R. (British Railways) green sold, but B.R. blue didn't so I collected that. I collected and collected... Ended up with 100 or so locos and a couple of hundred coaches and a few hundred wagons... Far more then I needed. I also invested heavily into DCC spending over £1000...
But when I left a well paid job (I found I had become so worn out etc that I caught myself acting silly where I was about to jump from a speeding train as a way out). I left the job and then later sold my house to pay back the mortgage, and without an income I had a re-think. Prior to selling the house I was in the bedroom and I picked up a beautiful 7mm narrow gauge loco kit. It was to build a body to fit a Hornby 0-4-0 chassis. I had origionally bought it because ai liked the look of it. It wasn't even my chosen scale but the kit looked so nice.
I assembled the kit on a chassis I had and I really, really loved it! Wow. This loco wasn't just a nice kit built loco but it was personal. I had made it and I had put my character into it while I made it. It is a freelance loco so not based on a specific prototype, so one makes it to look how one wants it to look. And wow! That had me hooked! I soon discovered the joys if 7mm British narrow gauge (Known as 0-16.5). And I quickly found it has soo many advantages.
I can build my own waggons for about a fifth of the price of a 00 gauge wagon. Though there are no factory made ready to use models in my chosen scale and gauge, this means that everything I make from a kit or scratchbuild to my own design has to be painted, and so everything looks characerful and personal.

So to sum up, I started off with toys. Became a collector of models. And matured into building my own.

I have broken the collecting habbit. I am slowly selling the factory made 00 gauge trains I have. I can make whatever I need instead. If I want a lot of anything I make it!

What I am getting at is that I didn't have fun collecting. It was an endless cycle of a commercial world... I have broken out of that and now, just as I did when I was a child.... Now I am having fun again.

Tennis: From watching my favorite players to actively taking tennis lessons. I still follow my favorite players. I have an even greater appreciation of them as my skills improve.