Too many things

I've been having a problem lately. Ok, I've always had this problem, but it just happened to rear its head again recently. I have too many interests. There are too many things I want to do and not enough hours in the day to explore every one of them. Right now I'm being pulled between two particular interests that just seem to consume my life if I let myself get carried away. Which I do... Often...

First, I've been working on a custom keyboard for myself. I'll probably do a write-up for it here once the first prototype is done but suffice it to say, I haven't seen anyone attempt something like it before, so I'm having to dive deep into a bunch of different areas that I had barely scratched the surface of before. So to get just a little bit of work done requires a lot of time invested in research and learning. Each time I get a decent bit done, I'm pretty mentally exhausted, so I had been just giving myself "relaxation days" between each feature.

That's when hyperfixation hobby number two snuck its way in. Sure my logic and reasoning brain was exhausted, but my creative side was full to bursting with energy! So what did I do? I took up writing. Not writing blog posts (obviously), but a novel. Or at least my rough first attempt at a novel. I found myself writing new scene ideas and character interactions from the moment I woke up till I was pushing bedtime. This sounds great on paper, I've never really had a purely creative outlet like this, but it wound up consuming my life in a way I'd never seen before. I found that I was putting off housework and even work-work (don't tell my boss!) just cause I couldn't focus on anything else until I got a scene out of my head. I even put my keyboard project aside for a full two weeks cause I was just so obsessed with this story I was writing. Honestly, at some points it felt like the muse had taken over my body and would not let me rest till I wrote just another couple thousand more words.

Thankfully, my creative mind seems to have petered out. Maybe it's because I'm far enough in the story now that there's less exploration and more planning involved with it. Or maybe I'm just finally running out of all the built-up creative juice. Either way, I'm finally getting the itch to get back to the keyboard project. Though now I'm worried the cycle will just repeat. If it does, I'm going to have to buckle down and find a way to wrangle my brain back so I can still be half functional at least. q