The Boat Problem....

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Hi everyone. I am a robot, and I have a boat problem.


When I say problem, I mean an all consuming interest area that takes precedence over work, family, romance, etc.

It's gotten to the point where my projects in my interest area are interfering with every aspect of my life. Even when I'm not actively working on them, I often space out while people are talking to me and start thinking about the various measurements for the next parts I need to make for a model. I need to manage how and when I spend time on my interests so I can still live during the times I'm not working on it, and so I can actually have the money to keep working on them.

Has anyone else here had interest areas take over their lives like this? How do you manage your time spent on interest areas so that they don't interfere with life?


Thanks everyone!
Robot

Not sure... I am often thinking about my hobby and dreaming up ideas...

P.S. I should also add that I posted this in the love section because my relationship with the love of my life is falling apart because I frequently turn down relationship time and intimacy in favor of the boat project.

I'm not that skilled in intimacy on a good day, and without dealing with this problem, I'll soon find myself without any intimacy at all. I should have said in the initial post that I'm asking how to balance interest area time with relationship time as well.

Hi Mountain Goat! Nice to meet you! What is your hobby? Mine is currently building a model Viking ship, down to each scale plank and rivet.

Yes. I have intense interests that come and go, but while I have them they're always all-consuming. For the past few years I've had a retrocomputing hobby where I'd constantly be sitting around with a calculator calculating theoretical system clock cycles for various computer processes, theorizing about a computer platform I may never ultimately build.

These days a woman has been consuming all of my mental space and time, works very similarly to hobby interests like the above. Obsessive personality I guess.

hi i-robot
i have an intense interest in music tech / producing music / building project studio so can make music
luckily for me
this intense interest may eventually lead to something that pays

i believe if I hadn't fallen down so many pitfalls in life (mostly due to helping people)
i likely would already have made lots of money

but hey
i guess you cant stop being the person who you were born and choose to be
and the person that your parents still want to talk to
instead of someone who took the other path in life and took the money while crapping on everyone

luckly for me i was born into a family of good parents
otherwise i would either be dead or be a very rich but nasty person

My fiancee and I have been arguing a lot lately about the proportion of time and attention I give to my boat project compared to the proportion I give to anything else including our relationship.

I offered to move all my boat project materials to the basement until I can balance the rest of my life. When the boat comes back it'll be only during scheduled time, worked into my schedule AFTER all the other stuff...

Last night, after a day of further arguing about non-boat things (mostly my fault), I finally got some downtime and immediately my brain went to the boat again. I think maybe I freaked out a little about not having a boat to work on.

I started looking up harvesting wood from our yard that could be used for model boat building, looking up how to mill it into planks and billets, and how to season it so it's useable for woodworking... in essence a project as large and complex as the boat itself, especially considering it involves tools and time that I don't have...

I told my fiancee about the idea this morning. She asked if I was insane and told me in no uncertain terms that adding such a huge project while trying to cut down on projects would be the End of Everything.

I can put my boat in the basement, but reining in my brain is another thing entirely....

Hi r00tb33r,

I'm not into the boat as a boat (and I hate fishing). I'm into the BUILDING of said boat. My fiancee and I have talked about it more and came to the conclusion that I'll put the boat away until such a time as I can engage with it in a healthy way. This will probably look like a schedule where I can only work on it during specific hours. Right now I don't trust myself to stick to a schedule with it, but I'm going to work on scheduling other areas of my life and then I'll work the boat in to the schedule.

We’ve all had special interests/addictions that consume our thoughts & sometimes every waking hour we can throw at them. Sometimes they’re a fascinating hobby, other times you listen to American news All Day Every Day for maaany covid-times days because their president kept doing crazy crap every day and all of the sudden you haven’t done anything else except listen to that soap opera from morning until night lol.

But you’re right, better balance is needed. Seems you’re having difficulties staying Present and focusing on the moment you’re living if you’re spacing out and thinking about model ship building. Have you ever read any books about being Present? I’ve read Eckhart Tolle’s couple books and attended one of his presentations. Some very good info there - got a good foundation out of his first book (the power of now) but then way more value out of the second one. (A New Earth - Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose) I think I gave my copies away but now I kinda wanna re-read the second one since it’s been so long.

Anyways, if you’re not even familiar with the concept of being Present, those books explain it very well.

Then there’s the matter of practicing it, using mindfulness techniques like meditation to clear your mind etc.

Also, helps to have other things scheduled - work etc, stuff you have to do and a timeline to get it done in, or routine things to do that aren’t your hobby. Keep yourself busy getting things done that need doing. Force yourself to think about and focus on the task at hand as your doing it - being as Present as possible vs letting your mind wander to your scale model projects.

_________________
No for supporting trump. Because doing so is deplorable.

Programming is that type of interest for me lately.

That’s Autism 101.

I'm an educated boatbuilder and rigger, and to some extent rope maker and sail maker.
Since I do it all day, I don't spend stupid amounts of time with it on my free time.

I don't suggest it as a solution, but when I were in relationships where children were involved I could control my interests much better than when I were not.
A baby needs to get diapers changed, get fed and read to. Paying bills or cleaning the bathroom can wait, but a babys needs can't.

Perhaps you could think of that as a metaphore for your fiance? She has needs that perhaps cannot wait.
I'm far from an expert on the subject, so take it with a cup of salt. Just my thoughts.

/Mats

And yes, programming.
I've spent soo much time fixing bugs and altering functions with the web shop program I used when I had my own business selling board games (another interest).
And I was pretty early in getting a raspberry pie, that I hooked up with a webcam that I could redirect with two step motors and then made the whole aparatus watchable and controllable via a website.
And another project where I collected weather information (wind speed, rain etc) and electicity comsumtion to try to see if eg winds from the north drove up electricity costs and therefore needed extra insulation.
I lost interest before I found anything out. That tends to happen to me, I get intensly interested and then suddenly I lose all interest.
My other great interest is cartoon books, I have hundreds if not a thousand and am a little bit of a collector.

/Mats