Fat Lady Sings

[wterrell]

Gentlemen,

Over the past few decades I have been prisoner to quite a few hobby interests that began as a passing interest but eventually became consuming.

Among these was the restoration of the Ford Model T, field trial quail dogs, classical literature, Pennsylvania longrifles, SxS shotguns, racing pigeons, ad infinitum.

After a bit of introspection and evaluation, there appears to be a life cycle to the passion for a thing that repeats with each hobby (at least my pathos seems to follow a prescribed path).

The beginning of a collection begins unintentionally with the acquisition of an example that conjures up ideal fantasies based upon uninformed opinion and ignorance. It is similar to infatuation. This phase is short-lived.

Then comes the quest for knowledge and obtaining the perfect, rare, or beautiful. This stage can have a life of decades and is always expensive. This career can only be described as compuslive or mania. The impressions with which you began the hobby have now been been exploded and destroyed; the innocence is gone.

The end of the cycle arrives quietly and unnoticed. None of the latest and greatest acquisitions to your collection has the place in your heart that your very first treasure occupies: your first pup that could never win a brace (and he taught you how to and how not to train a dog); that first old Kentucky rifle with the nicked stock, which will always be the cherished gun over the mantle; the pigeon that flew 300 miles in your very first race (no winner, just a homer); that old Model T roadster that you, sitting on the gas tank, drove out of the cow shed; the old Luger that your uncle gave to you (with the tale of bringing it back from France).

I now seem to indulge in my fancies with more leisure as I get older and not so frantically and with such urgency. I hope that it is not a loss of zest for life.

Do your hobbies have a life cycle similar to those that I have experienced?