Selling up and leaving the hobby - Your failure experiences?

[dirttorpedo]

I love the fact the guy on screen shot of the video is about 30....the answer "hopefully lots".

If it give any of you hope, ive just been on a 68 mile ride with our local touring club. One of the regulars on the ride still rides a carbon road bike on 25c tyres and is only 84 years young.....

I think that's an old photo of Russ. While he's not as ancient as some of us here, he's no longer they young hipster travelling the world on his Long Haul Trucker or Bompton touring.

 

[Taiphun]

I think my issue is selling off these parts I've accumulated along the way. Getting stuff sent to me is easy, but packing things up, dealing with scammers, putting things into the postal system are harder.

My buddies tell me I spend my 30s and 40s collecting stuff and my 50s will be spent selling it all off. They're not wrong.

I have my two titanium bikes, so you could say my goals have been achieved, and I'm riding my 29er a lot more these days.

 

[awac]

I don’t know who owns the quote below but…

“He who dies with the most toys still dies”

Most seem to say it is attributed to Malcolm Forbes, as well as the saying “If you can’t take it with you, I’m not going.”
How about going Pharaoh style and being buried with it? That would satisfy the hoarder in me on so many levels.......

 

[awac]

My experiences are much the same as many others....just lucky i realised that stuff don't equal happiness many many years ago.

Im the same in that there is nothing cycle wise I want or need....so for me its tinkering. I find its a great mindfulness generator. I then ride the result for a while...could be a month, could be 2 years, but then i break them up and do something else.....Its all just for shits and giggles really. I've only one bike i wouldn't part with, the rest would go if the price was right....and i believe that's the way to tell if you want that object or not!

I was a biker (motor) for 30+ years, but then found i was loosing interest....so i did the last thing on my list and built a bike from scratch....that hobby is now done....so be it...move on.

I know it sounds odd, but I honestly believe it makes no difference if you spend your time watching tv, on forums, building stuff or curing cancer....from a personal (not society's) viewpoint, its all just buring time till the inevitable end. So, as long as your enjoying it fine...if not, stop and do something you do enjoy before its too late or you loose any more precious time.

I grew up with classic motorcycles (I'm 60 now) my dad was big into such bikes and it consumed our family entirely. Motorcycles were everything then some years back I had an irretrievable breakdown in my relationship with my father and turned my back on the hobby. He died a couple of years back and my brother is still into motorcycling but it is lost to me

Great thread. It hits so many personal notes for me.
My father had a big motorbike dealership, but I used to see him only occasionally (my mother and father divorced when I was younger) and the motorbikes and the tools became my link to him in his absence. I grew up as a single parent family in the 70's very poor whilst he went on to become very comfortable.

He died a couple of years ago of cancer, and 2 weeks before he died I started having symptoms of my own (that's another story!). He was abroad with his family and conversations were by video link so I didn't tell him. I had no forewarning of his last video link and he simply said I should clear and share some of the stuff in his garage with his best mate.He had a collection of motorbikes and he knew I liked a classic one from a conversation 2 years previous but never left it to me personally. His treatment lasted 5 months, so he had time to arrange this if he wanted to, he didn't so I didn't clear anything. I have 4 motorbikes of my own in bits that I now find difficult to restore, but difficult to let go.

I have always had a connection to bicycles, because they were to me a motorbike when I was young, and because my father did not cycle, they were "me".

I have had many hobbies. Woodwork, watch repair, motorbike restoration. I miss them all (but have some handy skills now), but I don't have time left in my life for them all.

My hobbies have all have common emotional denominators. Focus, tools, research and nostalgia.

I find building wheels (a hang over from deep motorbike days) for cycles gives me focus, both mentally and for my tool collection. Collecting cycles/parts from the late 40s to the late 50s a nostalgia connection to an era of my parents.

Now the point. No hobby is a waste of time. Do it if it makes you feel full, but stop and recognise what it is that is feeding you.
A change for me to another hobby would only be trying to capture what the cycles are doing for me now, so I am allowing myself to enjoy getting better at doing it.
If you think another hobby will fit your denominator better then do it, but if not learn to deep dive into what you have. Recognise your emotional denominators.

 

[baron von greenback]

Keep the bikes for now the money you usualy spend on bikes put into what you fancy doing next then see were you are in 6months but i think you like building bikes to much arent you in the middle of a couple of konas builds (nice by the way) or are you hung on moving abroad thinking now you have to do it whats up with sticking them all in a container and taking with you still enjoy building leave them to your kids let them deal with it (if you dont need money) best of both worlds

 

[d8mok]

To update this slightly to where I'm at currently.

Ive not sold anything , but i have stopped myself buying several things I would like.

I've been doing a little more messing around with specs again on full bikes trying to reignite the spark. Ive also been doing a little bit with Instagram again which has gone well (110k views in last 30 days)

Im hoping that my next project comes back from paint soon, as that may help too.

 

[Boron]

Most seem to say it is attributed to Malcolm Forbes, as well as the saying “If you can’t take it with you, I’m not going.”
How about going Pharaoh style and being buried with it? That would satisfy the hoarder in me on so many levels.......

Remember that the Pharaohs took treasured items with them not because of status or inability to let go, but because they were needed to help navigate the afterlife.

That offering of four different seat clamps all in the same size might be just what the deity requires of you in order to pass through the underworld. It's just sensible planning in my book.

 

[Tootyred]

I've said it before, but im being buried with a few bikes....in kinda a " sutton hoo" burial mound.

Mainly because I love the idea of some archeologist in 1000 years time digging it up and extrapolating a load of complete nonsense about the socio-religious meaning behind the objects buried with me.

Plus...as said above....my chosen deity loves 26" steel.