Hobby Saturation is Real

But why is it so fun?

May 29, 2026

So, I haven’t been doing a hell of a lot of writing, lately. There are a few reasons why: a new job, a new relationship, time with the parents, and a seemingly all-consuming need - no, an obligation - to find something to tinker with around my house, my garden, my bicycles, and with a range of tools and items that I place strategically around me.

This latter pursuit is a real problem, or at least so it would seem to anyone else. As I write this, on the table in front of me and in my comfortable living room is plenty of evidence of the many tasks I have completed in this half-term holiday. This gets pointed out to me regularly whenever I have people around. The other day, a mate dropped by before we were due to go for a bike ride. I sent him this:

“Oh, and it’s house no. ___. Just knock. And mind the splinters.”

A short pause later, he replied:

“....The splinters?”

In the room were, variously:

The bicycle I was building up for that ride
Parts for other bicycles I need to replace
A Stanley No. 4 plane I’ve taken apart to service
A pot of succulents I decided to propagate from various cuttings
A stack of repurposed floorboards for downstairs
Beams of timber to make shelves and picture frames from
The guitar I am getting quite good at playing
A film camera I need to send off for developing

And that’s just the ones on display. Elsewhere, in cupboards and on shelving, are many, many more items that bear testament to the many hobbies I have pursued this year. I’m usually very disciplined about clutter and waste, and do a good clear-out every quarter or so. Invariably, I never get rid of much, not because I’m a hoarder who can’t part with anything (honestly!); but because every single thing is being used, or will be used, in some form or another.

I find that at least some, if not all, of this is a resistance to being bored. I just can’t seem to manage it. Despite all the many claims that boredom is the tonic to creativity, that being bored or allowing your brain some space to think allows ideas to flow in, my brain is just really full of them anyway. If anything, quiet times aren’t an opportunity to be bored, but for the ideas to expand and fill up the space, to become reified and come out in the form of paper, metal and wood. This is perhaps why I can’t meditate; I’d rather go for a long walk instead, and allow the thoughts to gain mass as I do, ready to come to reality at the other end.

There are, admittedly, some neurological reasons for this. I’m almost certainly neurodivergent - no diagnosis could make up for the time I spend around neurodivergent children in school, or contemplating the world in my own, slightly distinctive lens. I never had any help for it as a child, but what I did have a lot of was time and access to the outdoors. I spent that time roaming, building little wooded forts, climbing trees, playing some sports but often just whacking a tennis ball against a wall for the fun of it, and the curiosity of what might happen.

I suspect a certain generation of neurodivergent millennials will all have ended up this certain way - never diagnosed, not supported, academically adept but socially inept, and very, very good at making something of our own time. I feel we were born to have hobbies, and many of them. The dopamine-seeking nature of people with ADHD has been well-documented.¹ For those fortunate enough to not have developed addictions, being chronically busy is about the only way to fulfil that need for pleasure, for fulfilment.

We millennials are also lucky; most of us were born and grew up just before the great digital and social media boom. So, when I find myself reaching for my devices today, picking them up in a lull, to fill the gap between my next occupation, I still have enough cultural memory of a time when they weren’t necessary. A childhood Varun reaches out and drags me back through the hedgerows, to my tool-bench, to my bikes, birds and boots, to the things that really feel pleasurable.

Every time I stop to think about it long enough, I feel incredibly grateful for this burning desire for more hobbies. Let us consider the aforementioned bicycle build. A couple years ago, I wanted a fast-ish road bicycle to enjoy on the peaceful Warwickshire country lanes near me. I had previously bought bikes in their fully-built form, and they never really felt like mine. Not this time; I ended up with a pretty Raleigh Record Ace frameset from 1987, bare and gleaming. A perfect blank canvas.

As such, I would gladly have cobbled this bike together from a succession of eBay parts purchases, but I didn’t need to - the parts were already in my stash, accumulated from years of past Varun’s impulsive purchases and thirst for a new bike-centric project. I wouldn’t ever have needed a new headset press, rim brake calipers, M5 bolts, or a square taper bottom bracket tool - I used them back in 2015, and they were still there.

There’s another fun twist to the story; when I put some pictures up online, a friend, Tom - who I’ve never met in person, but is very much a kindred spirit - got in touch with an offer: would I like all the remaining parts? It turned out he had a whole bike’s worth of them; an insurance write-off that he couldn’t sell. Tom didn’t need them himself; he had his own stash. So I gratefully accepted the offer, and a box full of bits came in the post shortly after.

I thought of that box this week. Initially a fixed gear bike, I decided to fit it with gears. All I needed to buy was a new cassette and small chainring; the box contained brake levers, handlebars, two stems, two seatposts, a saddle, two immaculate bar-end gear shifters, and some lovely, soft handlebar tape. I looked in my stash and found enough gear cabling and both derailleurs to complete the build.

The bike itself isn’t perfect, but it means something deeper. Not just a 40-year-old frame rescued, or a loving marriage of parts old and new. In it I saw the culmination of not one, but two people’s thirst for more hobbies and their stubborn resistance to throwing them away. In fact, I’d wager that if Tom hadn’t offered, the build would eventually have been completed by way of other people’s stashes, borne of other anonymous sellers’ hobby saturation and their thinking those immortal words:

“I might keep this - just in case.”