My friends and I would get a new video game and they’d have controllers in hand before the shrink wrap hit the floor. I’d be on the couch with the instruction booklet, reading it cover to cover. The controls layout. The item descriptions. That lore section in the back that nobody else knew existed because nobody else opened the booklet.

They’d be halfway through the first level by the time I picked up a controller.

I didn’t think this was weird. I thought they were weird. How do you just start something without knowing what all the buttons do?

Why read the manual when you could just play?

It got worse. I started buying the Prima strategy guides. Not as reference to check when I got stuck, but as reading. I’d get a new game and sit down with the guide front to back before I ever touched the console. Every secret area, every hidden item, every stat breakdown and optimal build path. Cover to cover, like a novel, while the disc sat unopened next to me.

My friends thought this was a form of self-sabotage. Why would you spoil everything? But it didn’t feel like spoiling. It felt like preparing. Like showing up to an exam having actually done the reading while everyone else planned to wing it and pray.

I also read furniture assembly instructions. All of them. Start to finish, before I touch a single piece. I need to understand why step 6 exists before I get to step 6. There’s a reason the cam locks go in before the dowels, and I will find that reason, even if nobody asked and nobody cares and the answer turns out to be boring.

What does this look like outside of gaming?

Turns out “must understand entire system before participating” is less of a quirk and more of a personality trait with consequences.

When I discover something new, I go deep immediately. Not “read a couple articles” deep. I mean forums at midnight. YouTube rabbit holes that start with a ten-minute beginner tutorial and end three hours later on a video with 200 views where some guy in his garage explains the advanced technique that nobody asked about. I browse every subreddit. I buy gear I haven’t earned the right to own yet.

For about three weeks, I am the most informed beginner you have ever met.

Cooking. I don’t make a weeknight stir fry. I find a recipe that takes four hours, requires a trip to a specialty grocery store, and involves a spice I have to order online. I make it once. It turns out great. Then I eat something out of a box for three days because the discovery part is over and now it’s just… cooking.

Travel. Resorts do nothing for me. I want to know how a place actually works. Where the locals eat, what the neighborhoods feel like when you get away from the tourist path, what the bus system is like and whether it’s worth figuring out. I’ve spent more time researching trips than taking them, which is not something I’m proud of.

My career is maybe the most obvious fit. I’m a software engineer, which means every project is a new system to pull apart. New codebase, new architecture, new business domain that nobody’s explained clearly yet. The first few weeks of any project, when everything is unknown and the puzzle is enormous, are my favorite part by a wide margin. I picked the one profession where “obsessively learn the whole system before doing anything” is basically the job description. Finally, a place where my thing is the right thing.

What’s in the hobby graveyard?

Here’s the less charming side of this.

That deep dive phase has an expiration date, and I don’t get to pick when it hits.

The arc goes the same way every time. Discovery. Research. Gear acquisition that I justify as investment. Actually doing the thing for a while. And then one morning the motivation just isn’t there. Not fading. Not tapering off. Gone. Like someone flipped a breaker I don’t have access to. The hobby that consumed every free minute two weeks ago now sits in a closet, fully equipped and completely untouched.

If you opened certain closets and drawers in my house, you’d find the archaeological layers of past enthusiasms. Each layer represents a stretch where I was absolutely certain this was going to be The Thing I Stick With. Each one is a small monument to the fact that it was not.

I’m not proud of this. But I’m past the point of pretending it doesn’t happen.

Why not just replay the game?

People ask me this one a lot. You loved that game. Play it again.

I can’t. Not won’t. Can’t. I already know. I know the story, the secrets, the hidden room on the third level. Playing it again would be going through the motions of discovery without any actual discovery. It’s karaoke. You’re hitting the notes, but you didn’t write the song and you already know how it ends.

This is why I’ve drifted toward strategy and management games. Shooters are about repetition and reflexes. Do the same thing faster. Strategy games are systems. Every round is a different puzzle. There’s always an interaction you didn’t anticipate, a new angle to try. I get more time out of them before that feeling fades.

I never got into competitive multiplayer either. At some point you’ve learned every map, every weapon, every viable tactic. The game stops being something to figure out and starts being something to grind. I already have a job. I don’t need my hobby to feel like one.

Can you fix this?

I’ve tried. Genuinely. I’ve told myself I’d push through the dip, that the real satisfaction is on the other side of the initial excitement wearing off. I’ve read the advice. Discipline over motivation. Habits over inspiration. Just show up.

I understand it intellectually. But the fuel that drove me there in the first place was curiosity. The unknown. The map with blank spaces on it. Once the map is filled in, I’m not fighting laziness. I’m trying to start an engine that has no fuel in it. You can turn the key all day long.

It’s not a discipline problem. The thing that powers me is learning what I don’t know yet. When I know it, the power cuts off. Telling me to push through that is like telling someone to stay hungry after Thanksgiving dinner. The advice isn’t wrong. It just doesn’t understand what it’s asking.

What do you actually get out of this?

It’s not all abandoned gear and unfinished save files.

I know a little about a lot of things and a lot about a handful of things. I’m usually the person who read the thing nobody else read. At work, that means I pick up new systems quickly and catch details that slide past other people. When I cook, the meal is worth the four hours. When I travel, I come back with stories that aren’t about the hotel pool.

The same wiring that makes me abandon hobbies is what makes me learn fast and notice how things fit together. I can’t separate the useful half from the frustrating half because they’re not two halves. It’s one thing. The intensity of the dive and the certainty of moving on come from the same place, and I get both sides whether I like it or not.

So what do you do with all this?

I don’t have a clean answer. I’m not going to pretend I’ve figured it out, because I own too many closets that prove otherwise.

But I’ve started thinking about it differently. Maybe the goal was never to find the one thing and commit to it forever. Maybe some people are built to go wide. To keep picking up new instruction booklets instead of mastering one game. To treat the world like a system that always has another layer worth pulling back, even if you never stay long enough to see the bottom.

The kid on the couch reading the manual while his friends played wasn’t being slow. He was doing the part he liked best. Thirty years later, not much has changed. The subjects rotate. The instruction booklets got replaced by docs and wikis and forum posts. The pattern is identical.

I’m still reading manuals. I’m just not always finishing the games. And I’m getting more okay with that.

Slowly, though. The slowly is important. Because if I got okay with it too quickly, I’d probably lose interest in being okay with it and move on to something else.