(With Containers. Always Containers.)

My house fears new hobbies.

It knows the signs.

A delivery notification.
A slightly unhinged sparkle in my eye.
A spreadsheet forming in the distance.

Then come the containers.

Clear ones. Stackable ones. Labelled ones.

There will be research. There will be sorting. There will be a declaration:

“This one is different.”

For a while, it always is.

For years, I thought this meant I lacked discipline.

I envied people with one lifelong passion — the violinist, the war historian, the person who has loved trains since birth and never once strayed.

I thought depth required permanence.

I thought consistency meant staying.

But my nervous system was never built like that.

Autism builds roots. ADHD sets fires.

I live where forests regrow.

As a child, I sorted colours before I knew their names.

Crayons. Sweets. Barbie shoes.

I did not play with my dolls. I studied them.

Other children staged tea parties. I compared moulding differences and fabric textures.

This should have been a clue.

Then came pogs. Hundreds of them. I did not battle. I curated.

Pokémon cards. Never played. Archived.

Gel pens. Not for writing. For possession.

I did not want to win. I wanted the complete set.

Loss was unacceptable. Duplicates were negotiable. Organisation was sacred.

As an adult, the seasons gained velocity.

Soap making. Jewellery making. Loom knitting. Tattooing. Journalling. Tarot decks I never used. Thirty Monopoly sets we have played exactly once each.

Every time:

“This is who I am now.”

And for six months? It was.

I would research. Invest. Organise. Rearrange furniture. Explain mica powder to unsuspecting relatives.

Then ADHD would move on.

And autism would hold a small, dignified funeral.

That is the part no one talks about.

It is not boredom when an interest fades.

It is grief.

Grief for the version of me who felt anchored there. Grief for the containers now sitting quietly on a shelf.

From the outside, it looks inconsistent.

Inside, it is friction.

Because across decades of “different” hobbies, the thread has never changed.

Colour. Texture. History. Small beautiful objects. Preservation. Systems. The macabre. The meaningful. Things that can be arranged into sense.

I do not change interests.

I change format.

The core has always been here.

AuDHD is not scattered.

It is layered.

Autism wants depth so profound it could root through stone. ADHD wants novelty so bright it briefly blinds us both.

So I root. I burn. I rebuild.

I carry fragments of worlds most people never enter.

I know a little about many things. I know a lot about a few. And I forget facts constantly because my brain is hosting a rotating exhibition.

It is not a tidy library.

It is a museum with seasonal installations.

The building remains. The displays evolve.

If I had to name one lifelong anchor, it would be genealogy.

The past. The archive. The hidden story.
But even that is not separate from the others.

It is still about preservation. About pattern. About knowing where things belong.

Just like Barbie shoes lined by shade.

Just like beads in their compartments.

Just like tea organised by type, season, and emotional requirement.

For a long time, I believed I needed to choose.

One interest. One identity. One container system.

But seasons are not betrayals.

They are cycles.

Nothing has been wasted.

Every phase taught me something about beauty, order, texture, history, and myself.

Every hobby was a nervous system searching for an anchor.

Some anchors were temporary. Some are permanent. All were real.

My house may fear new hobbies.

But I no longer fear what they say about me.

The woman who studies, collects, preserves, and gently reorganises the world into something survivable —

she has been here all along.

I do not have one special interest.

I have climates.

And yes, the containers will multiply.

But so will the knowledge.

— Frost ❄️