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Obsessions and interests you can't afford

Mat82

Active Member
Hi everyone,

Do any of you have obsessions/interests that you can't afford? My obsession is with real cars, I like to buy them, buy parts for them, modify them etc but I do not earn enough money to do this. I have tried buying match box cars, model cars, Lego sets etc even though I like that stuff it doesn't hit the right spot. It causes me to be depressed and I'm not sure how to fix it. Anyone got any suggestions for me
 
It's difficult having an interest that you can't afford.
Mine is gems and minerals. I collect them.
But, there are some I want that I can't afford. So I know what you mean.

The other thing I would like to do is be able to just take time to myself and rent a nice
motel suite for like a week. Escape for a while.
Can't afford to do that either.
 
Musical instruments. I love making music and I love experimenting with different instruments. I’m pretty quick at learning how to play a new instrument and I’m addicted to learning new things.
I have a flute, an electric guitar, an acoustic guitar, a keyboard and a kalimba, but I’d like to have a few different types of guitar, a bass guitar, a contrabass, a saxophone and a keytar, because keytars are so kitschy they’re cool. But when I buy instruments I want quality instruments. I absolutely cannot afford all of those. Plus I have too much stuff for my tiny house as it is, I don’t have room for more things.
 
One of mine is Disney World. When I was younger, I used to dream of living and working in it. When I was 17, I ran away from home to live and work there. I was picked up in central Florida 3 days later and returned to my parents.

I still love it, but can't afford to go and my wife doesn't like it.
 
I have a flute, an electric guitar, an acoustic guitar, a keyboard and a kalimba, but I’d like to have a few different types of guitar, a bass guitar, a contrabass, a saxophone and a keytar, because keytars are so kitschy they’re cool. But when I buy instruments I want quality instruments. I absolutely cannot afford all of those. Plus I have too much stuff for my tiny house as it is, I don’t have room for more things.

That's really cool! I play the sax and have an alto sax and a bamboo sax that looks like a flute with a sax mouthpiece bonded to it. I bought it at a renaissance faire many years ago. I have a guitar and have always wanted to play, but can't seem to get my fingers to work right. I would like to get a theremin.
 
A one woman band. ;)
I can play many instruments and sing, but I can’t manage to do both at the same time, so alas. But I would like to buy recording equipment (another thing I can’t afford) so I can record those parts separately and mix them together. My boyfriend is good at creating electronic music and we’re still planning to collaborate on a track at some point, but we both have so many interests all over the place, so it hasn’t happened yet.
 
A couple years ago I got sucked into an online game with "in game purchases." It became clear that you would only advance with the paid boosts. I'm embarrassed how often I hit that "purchase" button. I definitely could not afford that, and eventually stopped playing it altogether. Now I play a stupid solitaire game that, at least, is free.
 
I am obessed with seeing new places. But age has slowed me down. I wanted to see Singapore but it hasn't happened. Books,music, movies, l need them all. I also love computers, when married, there probably was at least four in the house. So of course l allowed my daughter as much gaming consoles as she wanted, because electronics runs in the family genes. Now l can't afford books so l shop discount instead of B&N.
 
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Hi everyone,

Do any of you have obsessions/interests that you can't afford? My obsession is with real cars, I like to buy them, buy parts for them, modify them etc but I do not earn enough money to do this. I have tried buying match box cars, model cars, Lego sets etc even though I like that stuff it doesn't hit the right spot. It causes me to be depressed and I'm not sure how to fix it. Anyone got any suggestions for me

My brother has always quenched that kind of thirst by attending car shows and auctions (like Barrett-Jackson) and watching them on television. Vicariously less expensive than actually attempting to acquire the real thing.

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@Judge, there used to be a car dealer in Sacramento called Specialty Sales that sold antique/restored cars. I LOVED that place, and the salesmen tolerated me because I was just a 17 year old car geek geeking out to the old cars, even though they knew I'd never buy one. I would love to go to the Concours d'Elegance, lately they've been holding a parallel car show called Concours d'LeMons :p:D with such cars as a Trabant, a Mazda GLC with a rotary engine, a three wheel Renault that was too boxy to stay upright, and a really weird Fiat, a Fiat Strada IIRC.
 
My obsession is with real cars, I like to buy them, buy parts for them, modify them etc but I do not earn enough money to do this. I have tried buying match box cars, model cars, Lego sets etc even though I like that stuff it doesn't hit the right spot. It causes me to be depressed and I'm not sure how to fix it.

I have, er - had, a very similar problem. A few years ago I confronted my issues and the behavioral consequences. Afterward, I noted some strange repercussions I have not shaken to this day.

This got dark quick, so I'm sorry. I'm posting it anyway.

Now, I grew up quite poor, which comes with two specific caveats that contributed to my issue: you have to learn to fix everything that breaks, and it is somewhat expected to have a lot of junk laying around. So, I learned from a very young age how to fix everything and make it last. When something was too expensive to fix or required a specific tool that was hard to get, it got put into the ever-growing pile of junk. Also, if you were simply working seventy plus hours per week to barely get by and too pooped to fix it, it may be placed on the junk pile too to wait for a better or more lucrative time to be fixed. Nothing was thrown away. I was never jobless for any period either.

So, junk piles up and you know how to fix it...if one could only find the time and the money to do it and do it right. Not to mention the perfectionism commonly grouped with ASD and, of course, the poor understanding of motivations of social groups and their members. So I'd watch Overhaulin' and the like, and occasionally go to the street racer hangouts and parking lots and follow them to watch the races. Because, duh: all I could really do was watch. And plot.

And plot I did, with extreme and obsessive ASD superfocus. Working with what I had, I learned and researched, then designed on paper no less than ten entire vehicles. I spec'd everything based on the intended use of the vehicle, keeping projected costs down by doing factory upgrades and forum tricks, or simply fabricating a way to implement used parts like turbochargers and electronics. On countless pages of graph paper and giant stenos I engineered everything from a Ford powered dually AMC Eagle pickup (the Eagle-anche), to an LS swapped AWD six-speed Monte Carlo (with T-tops of course), including my opus: a twin-charged V6 Fiero with dual intercoolers, nitrous and methanol injection, radiused wheel wells filled with split-size wheels and custom fabricated suspension to manipulate launch weight transfer and tire slip-angles, all controlled with Megasquirt and a laptop fabricated into the dash (and other stuff I've forgotten).

At this point, I'm sure some readers will be thinking that I'm some kind of Fast and Furious poser - the kind of big-talker that would make a roll bar out of PVC pipe. Unfortunately for me, nothing could be further from accurate. Realize all of this took place over the course of about seventeen years, with projects requiring months of painstaking learning, trial and error, drawing and re-drawing until everything was right on paper. Throughout this process I bought countless books to aid and further my understanding - and not just those magazine-ish books, I mean academic books of the internal combustion engine, fluid dynamics and vehicle dynamics. Fascinating stuff - because when I couldn't afford a thousand dollars for a part, I could swing one hundred for an academic text.

But, this tendency to distract myself from the lack of IRL progress with elaborate theory was chronic. And destructive. I used to wallpaper my work areas with project schematics, formulas and specs for quick reference, and hand rendered drawings of finished products. But, I misunderstood those pesky group motivations. I thought people were addicted to their cars as art and expression of the human spirit and capability, and set out to express my self. I thought this was how social groups worked. I hadn't yet realized that these guys I saw at the street races and on TV were doing the bare minimum to acquire social dominance and get laid. I really believed it meant something deep.

As time went on, I noticed my jumping from project to project with no progress. I noticed all the rust forming on the cars. I saw what the weather did to paint and interiors. Every time I had enough money to buy something significant, it was stolen by some other necessity. Every time there was the hope of progress, something would give way. I watched my dreams and self expression rot before my waking eyes.

Inevitably, I had to come to terms with the fact that I would never have the economic capability to do anything with my projects. And, if I did get money, it would be too late for the rusted corpses of these cars I thought of as friends. In the end I sold three cars, scrapped nineteen cars, scrapped eight tons of metals and took over three tons of other crap to the dump. I watched them all be forked off a trailer into the hands of monsters that didn't care about them like I did. I cried like a little bicth right in front of the scrapyard guys. I made myself watch cars be processed and shredded to bits, so I would know what my failure really meant to these things - these friends I had sworn to protect and restore.

I ripped down and burned all my drawings, graphs, many books and reference manuals. It was quite ritualistic, but failed to make me experience any real relief. This was all over three years ago now.

In the years since, I have become stoic and detached from any work I do. Where I used to find great pleasure in the necessary and boring things, now I find annoyance and depression. Fantastically, this is where I found financial success - doing something strictly for money is where I finally found money. And now that I have disposable income, I stay as far away from cars - or anything I used to love - as is humanly possible. I'll die before I go through that again. Although I cannot say I regret getting rid of so much stuff, I am very regretful of the hasty rip off the bandaid way I did it. This way caused much waste and residual regret.

Using that same ASD superfocus, I dove into advertising and studying group psychology (and how I was duped into thinking car culture was something it really isn't). Now I make money selling people the lies they need to live. Interestingly, people buy lies almost impulsively, but when I want to talk shop about group psychology I get accused of lying. Unbelievable, really.

So, the moral of the story is: there isn't one. Happiness in the Western world is only for wealthy children and people too abused to dare look for hope. You may find some success in selling car parts on ebay - like going to the junkyard and buying a taillight for fifteen bucks and selling it online for eighty. But competition is fierce and it takes seed capital, if not tools and gas money. Just don't get too emotionally involved and don't place any of your personal value on the outcome of anything.
 
The things I'm interested in aren't expensive. But if "can't afford" isn't limited to money, but time, then yes. There are tons of hobbies that I would get into if I had unlimited time.

I would love to learn more origami, study more about certain types of advanced math. I'd like to try to "solve" certain games - cribbage, backgammon, etc. ("solve" means create the optimum strategy for the game, given any scenario). There are tons more, but I've deliberately forgotten them.
 
Jeeps. We have two, a his and a hers. These Jeeps are money pits. There is a ton of aftermarket stuff that you can get for them and we have lists for each. But these parts are very expensive, so it takes time to get the money together for this stuff. They are a never ending project because the aftermarket people keep coming up with new stuff that we just have to put on the want lists. Then we go off road and tear things up. But it is a ton of fun and these are the only off road vehicles that my wife will allow. No more dirt bikes or snowmobiles.
 
A car and driving lessons. In Canada, no car = no life.

And I'd be too scared to drive, anyway. I can't tell how close or far away other cars are, I'll cause an accident for sure. I never even learned how to ride a bicycle.
 

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