Sargon

And with that, my time as a Premium Subscriber will very likely come to an end. Nothing against the "new guard" at Giant Bomb, they are doing just fine, but they aren't the reason I have stuck around for all these years. Even after the loss of all the other core team members, Jeff was the glue that held everything together. I look forward to following him to whatever he does next, but with that, and Nextlander, and Fire Escape, there is simply not enough time in the day to keep up with a Jeff-less Bombcast. I will always have fond memories of Giant Bomb, and I appreciate the work that everyone has put into the site over the years, but for me it is time to move on. Thank you to Jeff for many years of entertainment and I look forward to hearing about what you plan to do next.

Proud moment last week, while watching AEW with my kids... My 5 year old was in the room and has been starting to pay more attention to what is going on. He turned to me unprompted and said, in reference to pins and hooking the leg, "It's a lot better when they grab the guy's leg. When they just lay flat with their arms they never get 3.". Yes, son, you are getting it already.

I feel like AEW is at risk of losing their identity and is beginning to drown in a roster of mid-card castoffs. Outside of Swerve Strickland, none of the more recent signings have excited me at all. Beyond that, I'm certainly not excited about a CM Punk title reign. His AEW debut was one of the great moments in recent wrestling history, but now he just looks old and past his prime.

It's funny that someone resurrected this thread after 12 years, but I might as well add to it!

My normal day-to-day shoes are Nike Initiator's. I have been wearing this same style of shoes for probably close to 10 years now. I keep re-buying the same ones and have them in various different colors, although they have been out of production for several years and are getting harder to find in decent condition.

My workout shoes are a semi-cheap pair of ASICS Gel-Venture 7's. I don't know how well they would hold up to daily wear, but they get the job done for biking or running on the treadmill.

When I need to step it up a bit (pun intended), I go to a pair of John Lofgren combat boots that I splurged on last year. I like these shoes a lot, but they will need to (and should) last a lifetime for how much I spent on them.

And finally, for doing heavy outside work, or when I need a decent boot but don't want to go crazy with the Lofgren's, I have a pair of Chippewa Apache boots.

I never owned either one growing up (I went from NES to Genesis to PlayStation), but played plenty of both at friends' houses. I could never get used to the N64 controller and that seriously impacted my enjoyment of the N64 games. I recognize that N64 has some widely accepted classic games, but none of them particularly stand out to me. On the other hand, I can still pick up an SNES controller today and play any number of SNES games that hold up well. For me, SNES wins in a landslide.

My best guess it that it would have been Guitar Hero songs for Wii.

Even so, everything you said is completely valid, but I'm just dealing with a much smaller slice of "me" time to operate within. And then there is the added factor of being mentally tired at the end of the day. That is not exclusive to having kids by any means, but kids certainly add to it. After work, dinner, working out, juggling the kids' evening activities, and getting them to bed, I have limited time and energy remaining. It is a matter of figuring out how to focus that remaining energy on something semi-productive.

A few of you touched on the same idea of committing small amounts of time to starting an activity and then letting that grow as the activity consumes me (if it does). That does make sense, but I have to get past that initial hurdle of actually starting to do something. Instead of thinking "I only have an hour, so I might as well just catch up on a TV show", I need to try to look at it as "I have an hour, so let's enjoy doing as much as I can". Easier said than done though.

As a somewhat comical example of the issue, one of the video games I have really enjoyed in the past is Out of the Park Baseball, a largely text-based simulation that I first started playing nearly 20 years ago. For the past several years, I have had every intention of getting back into the latest version of the game, but here is the cycle of what typically happens:

1) New game is announced - I get excited about it and prepare to purchase it
2) Game is released - I buy the game, but decide that I have many others things to do, so I'll wait for a few patches to be released before I dedicate any time to it
3) Several patches later, the game is complete and stable - I consider playing it, but realize the next version is only a few months away, so I should wait for the new version.
4) New version is announced, return to the beginning

I recognize exactly what I'm doing, and how silly it is, but I am not exaggerating when I say I have looped through that cycle for over 5 years now and still haven't touched any version of the game over that time (although I have bought them all).

In general, I often find myself thinking "I'll wait for X before I do this", but the problem is there is always another X and that can turn into an endless cycle of inactivity.

It's funny you mentioned guitar, because that could easily have been the next item on my list. Like you, I have dabbled in it for short periods over the past 30ish years, but have always wanted to come back to it in a more dedicated fashion. I might try to pick it back up again when/if the new Rocksmith game releases if it turns out to be a useful tool for learning to play an actual guitar.

This topic has been discussed previously in the specific context of video game backlogs, but I am coming to realize now that the problem for me extends well beyond video games. I have so many different hobbies, both existing and desired, and I don't find myself spending time on any of them. I have a huge mental list of things I want to do, not limited to but including:

1) Play various video games - new releases, backlog, retro games
2) Catch up on reading some of the dozens of books I have bought over the past few years
3) Spend more time playing tabletop games and learn to paint miniatures
4) Start fishing again
5) Work on my golf game
6) Expand my coding knowledge to dabble in video game development

I could continue listing more items, but you get the idea. All of these are things that I "want" to do, but I have limited time between work, kids, coaching baseball, etc. Realistically, there is no way I'll ever be able to accomplish everything on my list, but I have a hard time crossing things off and then I usually don't end up doing any of them. I might end up with an hour or two free at the end of the night, but starting anything on my list seems like such a daunting task that I typically just end up sitting on the couch and killing time watching TV before bed. Rinse and repeat while weeks and months go by where I don't accomplish anything that I wanted to.

The answer seems simple - Prioritize the hobbies, decide what is most important, and focus my limited time on a manageable set of activities. But something else always pops up that piques my interest and gets me stuck right back where I started with too much to do and not enough time. I am curious if others have felt this level of paralysis where you haven't been able to spend meaningful time on any of your hobbies, and if so what strategies would you suggest to start chipping away at the problem?

I think this is all just part of managing priorities as an adult, but I haven't been able to figure it out, and if anything it continues to get worse over time. I often have the thought that "maybe when I retire I'll be able to catch up on everything I didn't have time for", but I suspect that is both unhealthy and untrue. How do other people manage the desire to squeeze 100 gallons of hobbies into a 10 gallon hat?