Once a Hobby becomes work the fun seems to disappear.

@tyedyeskyguy wrote:

So, I don’t know if it’s just how busy this summer has been. Or if it’s the ticks and skeeters. Or if it’s how busy work has been as of late. I don’t know what it is exactly. But lately, I just don’t care to cache anymore.

I’ve found 1 cache maybe, in the past two months. I have between 7 and 10 puzzles solved, and had no urge to go grab them. I have two recently archived caches I still have not picked up. I have an event planned fro September that I have not even started putting together. I rarely visit this site anymore, compared to three or 4 times a day in the past. My only caching related activity is a coffee clutch with the locals on Thursdays which rarely has anything to do with caching.

Somethings entirely wrong. I just don’t care anymore. What happened?????????????????????????????????????????????????????? 😕

I think that is normal for some folks to get tired of any game that they play a lot, and normal for some folks to just keep on going.

An analogy would be Sudoku with me. When I first came across it, I loved it, and did it all the time. But after seeing most every possible way to way of solve them, it became a lot less interesting. Things can get kind of boring if you dont find a way to keep it interesting. I still occasionally look at them, but mostly just one at a time, or one to find a geocache.

Obviously, I have not gotten tired of geocaching yet, and I hope that I never do. I have gotten tired of certain kind of hides, which gives me the “Oh, gees, not another one of those again” feelings.

But I have found ways to keep the geocaching game fresh: traveling, exploring new places, De lorme challenges, hiding caches in interesting places, and caching with friends, etc, that keeps the game fresh for me. So, personally for me, as long as the game takes me to new places and presents new challenges and I have fun with friends, I am able to maintain my strong interest in the game.

However, I have totally lost interest in Christmas tree hides in nondescript city parks and have lost interest in sorting thru rock piles. But that is just me. To each their own.

zuma

seems to be a common thing this summer, that many of us have backed off just a bit. i think it started with the hard winter, then the wet spring, then the mosquitoes and ticks, and the extreme price of gas. i decided to shift my focus and only do the kinds of hunts that i enjoy. no micros, no cemetaries, no guard rails. hopefully, by eliminating them, i can get more hikes in the woods. and i am pretty much only going out for large groupings of caches at a time with maybe a month or more in between.

It’s so easy to feel burnout about anything you’re passionate about. You devote so much of your “being” to something and eventually it loses some of its thrill. That can be anything: hobbies, work, people even…

Given the increase in costs for everything these days — gas, commodities, accomodations, etc.. — it’s hard to maintain as a die-hard cacher. It takes some of the joy out of the activity when it costs a chunk of change for a nice round trip caching day. We’ve already spent a good deal of money on the technology — who wants to spend even more to have fun?

Thankfully, at this time, geocaching isn’t going anywhere. If you need to take a break from it, it’ll just continue on its merry way. And when you come back to it, there’s a whole lot more, new caches to be found — some even close to you!! Relax, enjoy (but keep in touch).

I don’t know if I’ve ever been all that hard-core, but I have had periods where I don’t care if I find a geocache for quite a while. Then I get all itchy to seek a container in the woods again. For me, I am pretty busy with some of the underworkings of geocaching (with my involvement in the WGA, presentations, classes and reviewing) so it’s something I am at least thinking about on a daily basis. At this time, that works for me just fine.

Geocaching has levels — get out of it whatever you’d like, whenever you’d like.

/end ramble

Bec

I’ve done only a couple caches over the last year which started out because my car broke down(over 240,000 mile on it). I did finally fix the car and managed to get something with less than 60,000 miles on it but still haven’t really wanted to search for anything.

I have still been using geocaching.com, but in a new way. When I am going to travel anywhere I always look for some really cool location to get out and stretch my legs and explore a bit(preferably within 10miles of the hwy I am traveling).
One stop I made recently I think there was 6 caches in the park and I never even bothered to upload the coordinates before leaving home. I really don’t feel like I missed anything though, I enjoyed some great views, had a nice picnic, took some photos, and got back on the road without spending an excessive amount of time looking for caches and probably ruining yet another pair of pants along the way.

Do I still like caching? yep, but for me caching was always more about the places that geocaching took me to than trying to find a box hidden in the woods.