I have spent a small fortune into making a multi media man cave loaded with many gaming consoles, an extremely large library of movies, and a growing vinyl collection. I wanted to bring people in and make my man cave a happening place.
I feel like all of that was an epic waste of cash now. Most of my friends do not visit me here, and the ones who do only visit a couple of times a month.
I have something going here, but all my friends have grown up and moved on.
I am not sure if spending time, money, and energy on a special interest is necessarily a "waste of money", per se. In the end, you are engaged in an activity or interest that is mentally stimulating to you. The alternate perspective being that if you had nothing to do, think, study, create, etc., I am thinking that would be a waste of a life.
My wife has been, at best, tolerant of my special interests over the years. I take these deep dives, spend lots of money, time, and energy. She will protest from time to time. However, here is the thing with people like us, those special interests are special to us. It is extremely rare that any of us find another person with the same sort of passion for the same things. It's quite rare. A more common experience, I believe, is failing to engage people with our special interests, as most are uninterested. Sure, people are polite and sort of act as if it is really cool and interesting, but they'd rather talk about something else because they don't know enough about the topic to even know what to ask, let alone have a meaningful conversation. What it ends up being is an educational monologue that causes them to mentally shut down. So, don't expect people to be interested in your special interests, as those are for you, and you only.
