When Does the Hobby Honeymoon End?

When starting a new hobby, some people are too focused on getting it “right” the first time, instead of experimenting and making mistakes. This is quite understandable as hobbies can be expensive and mistakes costly.

But once budget stops being a major factor, the ideal is that we pursue unfamiliar fields with an open mind. In the case of mechanical keyboards, it boils down to personal preference — preferences which a newcomer is either unaware of or unable to articulate.

For example, a common question might be which keyboard is best for work? And the apt answer would be the keyboard that you are most comfortable with and disrupts your coworkers the least. However, to someone new to keyboards, this answer is not helpful: they do not know what are the qualities that make a keyboard comfortable for them.

People tend to look for specific prescriptions: which switches to use? Which keycap profile to buy? Should they lube their switches and should they use O-rings? To the uninitiated, these are all jargon, but they are relevant to the hobby it pertains to. A similar case could be applied to fountain pens: what nib size do they prefer? Steel or gold? Piston converters or piston fillers? Etc.

Unfortunately, the best prescriptions come after finding out a person’s personal tastes. To someone new to the hobby, they cannot articulate these answers: they haven’t tried out all the options yet, hence them asking the question in the first place. It becomes a chicken-or-the-egg dilemma.

Research can only carry a person so far; after a certain point, people will need to take risks. How can someone recommend a specific chocolate brand and chocolate percentage to someone who’s never had chocolate? Will they discover the person has allergies to chocolate? Or that they find it too sweet? Or whether they prefer milk vs. dark chocolate?

Once people have taken the plunge, they will eventually develop their own criteria and find out what they enjoy and don’t enjoy. Once they find something they are genuinely comfortable with, they will need to make a choice: do they stick with what’s familiar, or do they keep on experimenting?

For enthusiasts, there’s no end to the latter. This is what motivates them and how it becomes a life-long hobby.

For those that choose the former, this is the signal that they’ve reached the limit — either due to personal interest/curiosity or because of their budget. The honeymoon is over; they can now move on.

But regardless which choice is made, the person has now developed their own aesthetics and vocabulary in relation to the hobby. They can, hopefully, identify the specific qualities that they are looking for and articulate it to others. This is what sets apart an experienced reviewer from an inexperienced one. There is a shared pool of knowledge they can reference when communicating with others.

The honeymoon may be over, but they’ve learned something about themselves.