Confessions of a Serial Hobby Hopper: How My Brain Actually Works

Let's just get this out of the way first: I have never finished a sentence in my life.

Okay, that's dramatic. But if you've ever talked to me in person, you know exactly what I mean. I'll be halfway through telling you about my crochet pattern and BOOM — I've mentally moved on to cinnamon roll flavors, then somehow we're talking about whether I should upcycle that hutch I saw on Facebook Marketplace, and you're just standing there like "wait, what happened to the crochet thing?"

Girl. I don't know. My brain doesn't know. We're just along for the ride together.

I call it undiagnosed ADHD. My family calls it "that's just Mom." Either way, here's the truth: I am constitutionally incapable of sticking to one project, one hobby, or one lane. And for a long time I thought that was a character flaw. Now? I've decided it's just how I'm wired, and honestly, it's kind of my superpower.

The One Constant: Crochet

Here's the thing people don't realize it's not like I have zero follow-through. Crochet and I have been in a committed relationship for 20 years. Two decades, y'all. That's longer than some marriages. So it's not that I can't commit, it's that I apparently needed to find The One (crochet) before I felt free to have a very open relationship with every other craft on the planet.

Everything else? Fair game.

Exhibit A: The Sewing Machine Incident

I will follow a creative whim into some genuinely questionable territory, and exhibit A is the time I decided sewing was going to be my next thing and put a sewing machine needle straight through my finger.

We are not discussing the details. Just know that it happened, it was gross, and I still, to this day, side-eye that sewing machine like it did something to me on purpose. Some hobbies you keep. Some hobbies you keep at arm's length after they draw blood(I do still love to sew). Sewing and I have a "we see each other occasionally at parties but it's tense" kind of relationship now.

Exhibit B: The Farmstand That Happened in 48 Hours

This is the one that really sums up how I operate. I started making my grandma's cinnamon roll recipe this summer — nothing fancy, just something for the family. Posted it on Instagram because that's what I do with literally everything I make. Next thing I know, people are DMing me asking to buy some.

Did I sit down and make a five-year business plan? Absolutely not.

Did I find a china hutch on Facebook Marketplace, drag it home, paint it, and turn it into a roadside pickup stand for cinnamon roll orders — all within about two days?

Yes. Yes I did.

That's the whole pattern, honestly. Someone shows interest in a thing I made → I get a spark of an idea → 48 hours later there's a whole new operation happening in my driveway. My husband has genuinely stopped asking "what's the plan here" because he knows there isn't one. There's just momentum.

Why I Think This Is Actually My Love Language

I've thought about this a lot (in between fourteen other thoughts, obviously), and I've landed on this: making things, any things, all the things is genuinely how I express love and get my joy. It's not about mastering one craft. It's about the thrill of someone wanting what I made, and then getting to watch their face when they love it.

That happens whether it's:

• A crocheted purse requested by a friend that she loves dearly

• A lemon blueberry cinnamon roll that makes someone close their eyes when they take a bite

• A hand-knitting workshop where someone finishes their first project and looks genuinely shocked at themselves

• A crochet wellness retreat where someone leaves calmer than they came in

• A piece of "trash" furniture that gets a second life and ends up on my front lawn as my little micro bakery.

Different mediums, same exact feeling underneath. That's my throughline, even if nobody else can see it from the outside.

My Instagram Explore Page Is a Personality Test

If you want a real diagnosis of how my brain works, just look at my Instagram explore page. In one scroll session you'll find:

• Crocheted chickens (don't ask, just accept)

• Impossibly beautiful cinnamon roll flavor combos

• The latest health trends for women over 40

• Upcycled furniture, upcycled clothes, upcycled anything with a pulse

• And approximately none of it is doom-scrolling

I can genuinely lose hours in there and come out the other side with six new project ideas and zero regrets. My algorithm has fully accepted that I contain multitudes, and honestly? So have I.

So, Undiagnosed ADHD or Just a Very Curious Woman?

Who's to say. Maybe it's ADHD. Maybe it's just what happens when you refuse to let "that's not really your thing" be a sentence that applies to you. Maybe it's both.

What I do know is this: life is too short to pick a lane. I'd rather be the person who tries the weird recipe, buys the ugly hutch, picks up the crochet hook for the ten-thousandth hour, and says yes to the curiosity every single time — even when it occasionally ends with a sewing needle in my finger.

So if you're the kind of person who has seventeen tabs open, four half-finished projects, and a Pinterest board for a hobby you haven't started yet — welcome home. We're going to get along just fine.

xo, Marie