Can you have too many hobbies?

A few years ago I would have described myself as a serial hobbyist: I would pick up and drop hobbies on a near monthly basis, but for a brief time, I was absolutely obsessed with my latest pastime.

Thankfully, these days I seem to have settled on a core set of hobbies, which I’m consistent with, and really enjoy. However, I still feel like I have a lot of hobbies, to the point that I don’t have as much time as I’d like for each of them.

My current hobbies are:

• Reading: This has been a lifelong hobby for me, and my most consistent: I generally read anywhere between 30 to 50 books in a year.
• Writing: Another lifelong hobby, but one I’ve definitely had ups and downs with. 
• Blogging: Inky Imaginings is actually my third blog. I had a book blog for eight years, and a writing blog for two years before I started this blog, so I’ve been doing this for a while!
• Stationery: I’m using this as an umbrella category to include my various stationery related pastimes, from journaling, to planning to commonplacing, and keeping up with my monthly personal curriculum.
• Gaming: I liked gaming as a kid, but fell off a lot in early adulthood, until a few years ago when I discovered cozy gaming and got back into it. 
• Cross stitching: My Nan taught me to cross stitch when I was a kid, but then I forgot all about it until recently, when I rediscovered it.
• Exercise: I’m fairly reluctant with this one, but it has to be done! I quite like my weekly long walk, but I’m less enthusiastic about the two trips to the gym I try to make each week! 

I am definitely fortunate that I have more free time than most women in their thirties probably do: I do have a full time job, but I have no children and no caring responsibilities. I’ll also be the first to admit that I’m not the most sociable person: I’m an extreme introvert who has a very person-focused job, so by the weekend all I want to do is hide away in my house for some much needed quiet time! 

But even with all that free time, the amount of hobbies I have feels like a lot to fit in, and I have been questioning recently: can you have too many hobbies? 

Hobbies are obviously wonderful, life-enriching things, but having so many does make me feel like I’m being pulled in quite a few directions, and with so many options, it can sometimes be hard to decide what to focus on. 

I’m also aware that by splitting my time between so many things, I’m spending less time on each. That means making less progress on my various projects and goals, and in skill-based hobbies, I’m not learning as fast as I could be. 

But at the same time, having so many hobbies means I have variety, and it’s hard to ever feel bored. Also, if I start to feel burnt out of one hobby, I always have a different one I can move on to for a break. 

I also feel like having a wide range of hobbies has given me more varied skills, and enriches my life in different ways. For example, reading allows me to see how other people see the world, and build empathy and understanding, whilst activities like journaling allows me to understand myself better. 

There are definitely pros and cons to having a lot of hobbies, and perhaps the amount I have is too many. However, this is probably a pointless question to be asking, since I don’t have any that I’d be willing to drop! 

I guess the solution is likely better time management (although I don’t want to make my hobbies feel like a job, or like they necessarily have to feel ‘productive’), or rotating my many hobbies, or perhaps working on them seasonally. But being interested in too many things isn’t exactly a bad problem to have! 

I’m definitely interested to know other people’s thoughts on whether there is such a thing as too many hobbies, and how they deal with feelings of overwhelm in this situation. 

So what do you think? How many hobbies do you have, and how do you balance your time between them?