The Closet of Former Selves: A Field Guide to My Abandoned Starter Kits
On a Sunday afternoon I opened the hall closet looking for a light bulb and found a museum instead. Admission is free. The lighting is terrible. The docent is me, wearing a sweatshirt with paint on the sleeve, and the gift shop is a plastic bin labeled CRAFT STUFF, which is doing a lot of emotional labor.
This is the Museum of Almost, a small institution dedicated to every hobby I quit before it could become a personality. At Rishece, the house style is essays, odds, and ends from an unsettled mind, so consider this an inventory rather than a confession. The collection is not rare. Most of it came from Target, Michael's, REI, or a Facebook Marketplace transaction conducted in a parking lot with someone who seemed very ready to be rid of a dream.
Exhibit A: The Sourdough Starter That Became a Science Experiment
Accession number: 2020. Material: flour, water, glass jar, regret. This starter was supposed to be my entry into a slower, more tactile life. I named it Doughlores. For eleven days I fed it on a schedule, talked to it, and sent photos to a group chat that did not ask for them. Then I forgot it on the counter during a heat wave, and it developed a gray liquid layer and what I can only describe as an attitude.
The museum label reads: Abandoned after eleven days, which is technically longer than some celebrity marriages. What I remember most is not the bread. It is the feeling of buying a kitchen scale at 9 p.m. on a Tuesday because I had decided, with total confidence, that I was a person who bakes. The starter kit is a tiny identity loan. You pay upfront in cash and later in closet space.
Exhibit B: Watercolor Set, Half-Used, Fully Optimistic
Accession number: 2022. A tin of twelve pans, two of which are nearly gone because I watched a forty-minute video about skies. The brushes are still decent. The paper is warped in one corner where I left a wet cup on it. There is a half-finished painting of a lemon that looks less like a lemon and more like a warning about ambition.
I quit watercolor because I was not immediately good at it, which is a sentence I would like to edit before publishing but will leave in because it is true. Somewhere along the way, hobbies stopped being things we do and became things we perform. The internet does not show you the third week, when the novelty burns off and your lemon still looks like a bruise. It shows you the finished page, the tidy desk, the hand-lettered label on the jar. The starter kit promises that version of you. It does not promise the middle, which is where most hobbies actually live.
Exhibit C: The Binoculars Phase
Accession number: 2024. One pair of 8x42 binoculars, a pocket guide to birds of the eastern United States, and a small notebook with exactly three entries. Entry one: small brown bird. Entry two: maybe a sparrow? Entry three: very confident crow.
This was a brief and expensive flirtation. I liked the idea of birdwatching because it sounded patient and quiet and like something a person with a settled mind might do on a Saturday. What I did not account for was that birds are fast, and my attention is not. I lasted three weekends. The binoculars now live next to the sourdough jar, which feels like a joke the closet is telling at my expense.
The Starter Kit Is a Tiny Identity Loan
Here is the thing about American hobby culture: we do not just buy supplies. We buy a preview of a future self. The running shoes are not shoes; they are a version of you who wakes up early. The bread flour is not flour; it is a calmer Sunday. The watercolor tin is not paint; it is proof that you have an inner life that is not entirely made of screen time and errands.
That is not stupid. It is hopeful. It is also extremely profitable. The starter kit industry understands that the first purchase is the easiest one. It sells the beginning, not the middle. The middle is where you have to keep showing up after the dopamine leaves, and nobody puts that part on the box.
The leftover gear in my closet is not evidence that I am flaky. It is evidence that I keep trying on identities to see which ones fit. Some people do this with gym memberships. I do it with Mason jars. The result is a small, dusty collection of former selves, each one convinced it was going to be the final version.
Why Quitting Fast Can Be a Commitment
I used to think quitting after three weeks meant I lacked discipline. Now I think it can be its own kind of commitment, provided you are honest about it. Quitting early is a commitment to not dragging a dead hobby behind you for years out of guilt. It is a commitment to your closet, your budget, and the person you actually are rather than the person the catalog imagined.
The trick is to quit on purpose. There is a difference between abandoning something because it got hard and deciding, after a fair trial, that this is not the life you want. One is avoidance. The other is curation. The Museum of Almost is not a shrine to failure. It is a record of experiments, and experiments are supposed to end.
A Slightly Ridiculous Rubric for 2026
If you are staring at your own closet of former selves and wondering which one deserves another try in 2026, here is the rubric I am using. It is not scientific. It is barely practical. But it is better than another late-night order from a website that sells artisanal everything.
- Did I enjoy the middle, or only the beginning? If the memory is mostly shopping and setup, let it go.
- Would I do it badly in private? If the answer is yes and that sounds fun, it passes. If the answer is yes and that sounds unbearable, it fails.
- Does the gear still work? Sentimental attachment to expired flour is not a hobby.
- Is there a smaller version? One sketchbook, not a full studio. One hike with borrowed binoculars, not a second pair.
- Would I still do it if I never told anyone? This is the big one. If the hobby needs an audience, it might be a performance. If it survives without one, it might be yours.
I am keeping the watercolor tin. Not because I think I will become a painter in 2026, but because the lemon is still there, half-finished and a little ugly, and I would like to see what happens if I add one more layer. The sourdough jar is going in the recycling. The binoculars are staying for now. I have a feeling the crow would like a rematch.
That is the tour. Exit through the closet. Please do not touch the exhibits. They are still deciding what they want to be when they grow up.
