I’ve just graduated college and, as horrible as senior year is, I’m TRULY losing my mind without anything to do. Aside from submitting applications, I’m doing nothing all day and it’s wrecking my mental health.
I need to get into a hobby. The problem is I can’t stick with anything. I’ve tried to consistently do things I like, like play guitar, exercise, code games, etcetera dozens of times and nothing sticks. I don’t want to waste the effort trying again. I’m on social media and I play too many video games, but those are ultimately making me more depressed.
ADHDers who have hobbies, how do you get into something and not lose all interest the next day or week?
I hop back and forth between hobbies. Nothing really holds my interest for long unless there’s a social element to it. So the first thing I do if I want to stick with something is fine a group to do it with. Make social commitments, so that you’ll have an additional reason to do it. Like when I got really into hiking I had a group of 3 friends that I would meet every Wednesday for a training hike and then at least one weekend a month for an adventure hike. When I was rock climbing those same people started rock climbing with me and we met Monday, Wednesday, and Friday every week at the rock climbing gym and then did an outdoor climb about once a month.
Even with a group I eventually move on to something else. It’s not that I get bored with the current hobby, it’s that I find something new that totally enthralls me for about a month and then I find a new shiny hobby. So far my hobbies in no particular order are target shooting, scouting for hunting spots (even though I don’t actually hunt), archery, rock climbing, backpacking, mountain biking, 3D printing, CAD, video games, reading, boating, fishing, FPV racing quadcopters, bodybuilding, amateur radio, & collecting baseball cards. That’s obviously way too much recreation for a person with a full-time career, but I don’t do it all at once except for bodybuilding which I try really hard to stick with. I’ll get really into something for a month or two, then drop it for a year before coming back to it. It gets pretty expensive having so many hobbies, so I’m trying not to pick up any new ones. Thankfully there’s a lot of crossover between some of them.