How do I stop quitting?

[GhostCicada]

Through out my life I've had many hobbies. Want a life like pet portrait, I can do it. A crochet blanket, I got you. Want your nails done, I can do that too. Need some silversmithing done, sure thing. You get the idea. I pick up these hobbies, almost fixate on them, love it, then one day I wake up and it's gone. I just don't have any interest anymore and can't force myself to keep going, it doesn't feel good anymore, it just feels hollow. I feel like a Jack of all trades and a master of none. I'd love to be able to just focus on one thing for years, build my skill, become a master of my craft. Instead I flit from one thing to the next, I'm pretty good at a lot of things but I'd love to just be able to focus on one longterm.

Has anyone been like this and managed to fixate on something longterm in the end? What changed things for you? As I'm writing this my head is saying maybe you just haven't found the right thing, try another hobby but I must have gone through them all at this stage. Can anyone help me stop this cycle!

I think this sounds like a really interesting trait to have, and not one that can be easily manufactured.

I have always been a quitter. I have lost count of how many hobbies I have had and the money I have put into them. I will research until my eyes bleed once I get into something, then all my effort is wasted as I no longer care. I do have ADHD however and that seems to be a common thing amongst ADHDers.

I do this!! The only thing I find that helps is to rotate between hobbies. So for example. I will practice piano 7 hours a day for 2 months. Give my absolute all. Then when I burn out switch to painting - last time I did a 'collection' so water colour animals, then I picked my rusty french back up. Went nuts with grammar and then knitted a scarf then ploughed through a whole load of philosophy books I'd been saving. You get the gist. A year from now when I go back to piano I'll be rusty for sure but it will take much less time to relearn the pieces and I'll add a few more to my list. Looking back, my art collections have got better over the years so even with big breaks I can see the improvement

I think of it like this...

Imagine a bar chart. Your hobbies are plotted on the x axis. Your skill points on the y axis. As you focus on one hobby your skill points increase rapidly. At the same time the others go down slowly. When one falls below a certain point you switch to that one, and boost the skill points. Keep doing that and you will get better at all hobbies but at a slower rate. You'll be playing a long game.

Only thing for me that is non-negotiable is running. That's part of my routine like brushing my teeth.

I think being an all rounder is great. When you start getting into elite or professional territory, the fun often goes as it starts to get serious. I like being good but not exceptional at lots of things. It's a happy place to be.

I suppose I just don't mind it? My hobby is hobbies. Serial passions. I meet them, love them, and leave them! What's wrong with that. You can't escape death via a world class mastery of raffia.

Better to fixate for a time than never start anything (which is me!). I think it’s amazing to be able to do all those things. Variety is the spice of life and all that.

What’s wrong with quitting? They’re hobbies, not life changing/career building skills. Hobbies are things you do for fun, if it’s not fun, why continue?

OP, you are not a quitter. You are like me (and many people), you love learning new things at a guess, and once you are pretty good, the buzz of the new thing dissipates.

That's fine - accept it for what it is. You like learning new things - it isn't the thing itself that really excites, it's the newness, once that fades the thing itself becomes boring. Nothing wrong with being broad but not especially deep in your knowledge and talent - just as useful as being deep and narrow.

The Puttylike website explores this, I think it's very useful
https://puttylike.com/

Watching with interest. This is very much what I'm like too. I think that's excellent advice from @Journeyintomelody

Have you tried sewing? It's a whole range of hobbies grouped together. Patterns - if you buy pdfs, there's papercraft too. Fabric - so many different types. Haberdashery / trims / notions - where to even start? Then there's organising, storing and cataloging everything. Cutting tools - you can never have too many scissors, rotary cutters and snips. That's all before you even get a machine, learn how to use it, learn how to pattern cut and fit, learn how to assemble etc. And then you can start to sew. See, lots of hobbies all in one.

Funnily enough, I am gearing up for this to be my next interest after cycling through: drawing, writing, lino-cutting/printing, and jewellery silver-smithing. I've decided to go with the flow of multiple interests as it's better than none. I agree with what others are saying, that the moment it starts getting too serious (this is around the time I start thinking "maybe I can sell some of this stuff") is when the fun goes out of it.

I'm like this, but I embrace it! And like a pp, I just rotate them. So I have about 7 or 8 things I enjoy at the moment and I'll do each one for a few weeks or months, then when the fizz of it's gone I'll move onto the next one. Then months or a year later I come back to the first thing and it's fun again!

All of you describing yourselves as quitters really grates! For some period of time, no matter how brief, you had an interest in something and gained some knowledge. Then you became interested in another thing, etc. You'll all be much more interesting to talk to socially because you can talk about a range of things. It doesn't look like quitting to me, it looks like someone who is interested in lots of things.