I used to be a huge player of the popular blocky game, Minecraft. I’ve beaten the Ender Dragon and the Wither countless times since I started playing in 2013 or so. However, more recently, I’ve found myself kind of falling out of my old rhythm. I get bored of the game a lot quicker than usual, unless I suddenly have a huge spurt of motivation to play, like when I find a new server or modpack that I enjoy. I’ve noticed this pattern over the years that I’ve played: I’ll get really into it, start losing interest for a couple months, and then get back into it with some new kind of twist or gameplay experience. I don’t know if this is because I’m a little too busy at the moment, or if I’ve just found things that I like to do better, but this kind of pattern confuses me, especially with things that I’ve always really enjoyed, like Minecraft. 

Not only do I find this pattern in things I really enjoy, but in very mundane things as well, like work or school. I get really motivated to do assignments if I feel like they are unique and interesting, or, even better, if I can find a unique way to do a boring assignment. For example, in high school, I had a communications class where we had to make a commercial for a product that we created, and I got really into it, making a six-minute-long, hilarious info-mercial that detailed the product and those who used it. However, most of the rest of that class felt uniform and uninteresting to me. It wasn’t a bad class by any means, it just felt mundane after that assignment.

I’m not sure if this cycle is something that only I go through or if a lot of people do this, but I think I’ve figured out a probable cause. When I find something I really like, I get really excited about it, but then if I try another thing that is related to the first, and it isn’t as good, I tend to get a little burnt-out from the thing as a whole. Why do we get burnt-out like this? Why do we just kind of stop enjoying things? If we really enjoy something and get really passionate about it, then why do we ever stop? 

I’m not even going to pretend to offer an answer to these questions, because I don’t feel like there is a concrete one. People get burnt out for various reasons that other people may not understand. For me, it’s usually a decrease in the quality of whatever I’m interested in, but that’s not always the case. I watch anime a lot, and I’ve watched a lot of varying quality, including some very bad ones (I’m looking at you, Promised Neverland Season 2). But this has never pushed me away from anime; in fact, it has led me to watch more good stuff to make up for the bad. The pattern of what I burn out to and when I burn out to it is so inconsistent, which is weird. Why some things and not others? This exclusivity baffles me, and I’m not sure what to do with it.