On Overwhelming and Stressful Hobbies

Now, many of you have probably been clued into the fact that I am an 18" doll collector by now. I happen to think that these dolls (specifically American Girl dolls) are freaking adorable, and I demonstrate no self-restraint whatsoever in purchasing them. In fact, in the past six years, I have amassed an army of 29 of them. 29. I shit you not. And 29, while that may be acceptable to some, is the breaking point for me. I can't look at some of them without stressing myself out. How did I manage to waste so much of my money on them? I need to be saving that money! There are binders to buy and testosterone and surgeries to save for, after all.

Hobbies are meant to take the mind away from whatever lame things are happening in one's life. However, I can barely look at those dolls without feeling guilty, which pretty much overrides any point to collecting them. I believe this is for four main reasons:

• those dolls are hella expensive. How will I pay for my future if I keep spending all my money on them?
• half of them are white. Five are blond, while three are black. To some, that's a good balance. To me, it's nowhere near balanced, and I feel bad just thinking about how many white dolls there are, as well as how similar many of them look.
• some of them are in not-the-best condition. Yes, there's no mold, and a pretty minimal amount of marks. But a few have wigs that are absolutely trashed.
• I don't have time for them anymore. I used to be able to pull out a few each weekend and give them "styling time," where I'd change their clothes, do their hair, and kind of play with them, in a sense. Now? I'm lucky if I change one! A vital part of collecting for me is being able to spend a decent amount of time with each one.

So I will be selling half the dolls and putting all the money from them into savings; between you and me, I'm anticipating about $2,000, maybe even more, because that estimate's based on summer slump pricing. To a naïve teenaged mind, that's a shit ton of money. I'm sure it'll come in handy at some point, though. That'll leave me with three white dolls, four if you're counting the Russian Ashkenazi Jewish one. Three will be black, one will be Indian, one will be Middle Eastern, three will be Asian, one will be Polynesian-Japanese, two will be Latina, one will be Native American. I think that'll work just fine. And then I'll have the space to buy one more if I absolutely have to.

After all, nothing is really written in stone, and if I'm becoming emotionally disconnected from these dolls, there's no reason not to sell them.