The one thing that I find different and sometimes a bit jealous of people who's passion is in some or multiple forms of making is the idea of having a bunch of projects and stuff to show. Of course there's the practical and sometimes relationship implications of finding the space to store it, but a bunch of in-progress woodworking projects looks impressive in a way that a desktop and NAS containing a bunch of in progress coding projects don't.
I've been getting (back) into making electronic music over the past year or so, and one of the interesting areas to explore is how much to lean on hardware versus software for musicmaking.
There's a whole subreddit, reddit.com/r/musicBattlestations/ where people show off their music setups with lots of expensive hardware. And there is something really cool about being able to occupy a physical space that inspires you and reminds you of what you are. We are physical creatures and it's much easier for us to play a role if we're in the right set with the right props and don't have to imagine it all in our heads. (This is also why working from home for an extended period of time can be hard.)
At the same time, hardware is expensive, takes up a lot of space, can be hard to reconfigure and can easily get mentally overwhelming. It's hard to switch between working on two different songs when each one requires you to unplug a bunch of wires and move boxes around. At the same time, it's maybe easier to finish that first song if you know you can't start the second one without unplugging everything...
Choosing the right space and workflow to be a productive musician is this weird sort of meta-creative process that's surprisingly hard and not talked about much (beyond fetishizing giant studios and expensive gear, or fetishizing minimalism).
I picked up a Polyend Tracker last year and the artificial limitation has made me significantly more productive. I'll hook it up to a couple other bits of kit to sample from but then I'm on my way and working from anywhere.
I prefer reddit.com/r/synthesizercirclejerk, where people post pictures of succulents, talk about how much the next gear purchase will make them happy, and share their live ambient drone albums.
As someone who often has multiple meat-space projects in flight, I'm convinced there's a very thin line separating busy creative types having lots of physical projects taking up space and any other kind of hoarder.
Whenever I'm getting ready to push through another phase of a big project, or just getting started, the necessary accumulation of materials and tools makes it especially apparent. It's just a small loss of motivation, distraction, or injury away from becoming another burst of hoarded expensive junk.
Consider yourself lucky your project messes can hide away in a NAS...
Perhaps, but I'm constantly reminded how trivially my personal situation can become indistinguishable from that of any other hoarder should my discipline to finish what I've started wane.
I think anyone who takes on large costly DIY projects taking months to years for completion can relate. Sometimes I feel the only thing driving me to finish some projects is the fear of falling into a hoarding pattern while I tell myself the project is just on the backburner. If I became comfortable with letting outstanding projects enter a backburner mode indefinitely, it'd just be mental gymnastics enabling hoarding IMNSHO.
Edit:
I'm reminded of an interaction I had recently with customer service @ Home Depot, while I was returning some unused tools and materials for a project I changed directions on and no longer needed.
I'd mentioned to her how close I'd come to just keeping it all instead of returning, despite not needing any of it now, since it wasn't a large sum of money. But that a fear of becoming comfortable with such a rationalization to not return things would just enable a form of hoarding.
It apparently struck a nerve as she entered into some kind of confession mode. She enumerated a bunch of projects she has bought everything needed to do from tools to materials, sitting collecting dust for years, and never finds the time to actually start, let alone complete.
I found this video by Zach Freedman about finishing projects to be enlightening, especially the idea that "deciding to not finish a project" is a way to finish a project.
I've hauled around custom pcbs and torroidal transformers through like 15 different apartments. It was for an old audio amplifier project ('dx blame' i think). Someone on a forum sent me his 'favorite' mosfets and the pcbs from germany. Seeing them when moving reminds me avoid physical DIY projects unless simple stuff for outdoor rec.
It's all just personal experience, but it's quite easy to move from "having hobbies" to "collecting hobbies". Speaking from experience here, the difference between me and my father (who do this) and my brother (who doesn't) is stark.
Eh. I'm a scale-model builder, and that community is full of people who build amazing models...but even more full of people who just collect kits. Kits that they'll build "someday."
For programming projects, I personally find that the ritual of setting up all of the infrastructure is very likely to distract me from actually building the thing.
I can be obsessive about doing things the right way, but my most successful projects have always been the ones where the code looks like I dragged it kicking and screaming over the finish line and the infrastructure is basically nonexistent. And sometimes I clean it up afterwards, once I am motivated by the success of the project.
By infrastructure I mean things like CICD or even tests. If I have to choose between thorough testing and being able to finish the project at all, testing can wait.
I can relate and I think that's because with the projects that I'm most passionate about, I can't wait to set up the infrastructure and do it right. I want to do it now! But generally, if there's a project that I'm struggling to find motivation with, I'll start the long process of setting up the infrastructure, hoping that I'll get motivation in the meantime and it sometimes helps a little but often it just ends up with me constantly pushing it back.
> If I have to choose between thorough testing and being able to finish the project at all, testing can wait.
The way I look at it, you can't test anything until you know what it's supposed to do. You won't know what it's supposed to do until it's at least close to being done. No sense in testing until you get there.
If you want to have a head start on testing, making sure to write your code so it's easy to test is probably fine, even if it's not what I'd choose.
As somebody who has those sorts of projects, all I feel is guilt when I look at the unfinished ones. At least with code you can shove it in a folder and forget about it…
I actually had the idea of "hobby as a service". Create a catalog of a few dozen hobbies to start, and build boxes that are a foothold to the hobby.
Could be:
- a cheap ukulele, tuner, with a link to some youtube lessons
- a drawing pad and box of pens with some tips on figure drawing
- a whittling knife and some wooden spoon blanks.
You receive the box and give it a try. Maybe you like it, maybe you don't but you can always put the stuff back in the box and return the items and receive another hobby to try without the dread of having a drawer full of nice spoon carving knives that you thought you'd love but are now just a symbol of your abandoned dreams.
The thing is, it doesn't even have to be cheap if the gear is durable. The problem is many hobbies are sized to the user (eg bicycles, wetsuits, snowboards). It would be lovely to drop a few k into one hobby and be able to transfer it back out for the next if it turns out that hobby isn't a good fit.
