Getting back into the hobby after a long hiatus?

I just pulled my dolls out of storage after 7 years away. Can't believe I can still remember my log-in!

 

Eiyo! I'm pretty much in a similar situation! Though I wasn't 100% gone (I sold off over half of my collection in the last several years and bought some sculpts to reshell some characters that ultimately ended up sitting around waiting for me to be back in full swing for a really long time), I've been practically in a dormant state since 2017. That was literally the last year I actively tried to take photos of my dolls and/or had any sort of inspiration for them. Finishing uni and moving back to my hometown which I hated, starting a thankless job, missing my friends, poverty, and eventually my mom falling ill and then passing in early 2019 effectively crippled me emotionally and creatively in just under two years. It was then I decided that I wouldn't let depression win over me and hit the ground running and... in less than a year I found myself expatriating to another country, and before I even had the chance to settle down covid hit like a tonne of bricks!! And, like that, another three years passed in the blink of an eye.

I've had small moments of touching back down in the hobby between then and this year but all were very brief and far apart. Then I finally completed my first doll since taking this ginormous break, my minifee Alan, my Venti, whom I bought on a complete whim as a sort of emotional support doll when I was going through a hard time last year. (it took me... only, maybe 4-5 months to get around to giving him a faceup, if that's any indication of my state before) and suddenly it all clicked back into place. Since then I put forward all of my dolls and have started doing maintenance on all of them and it's overwhelming but I love it all the same. I pooled some funds and bought some much-needed bodies for a couple floating heads, cleared out dolls that no longer worked for me, repurposed several to fit my stories, and am getting ready to place some massive clothes orders. Then I dreamt up the story of Genshin Gymnasium while looking through my uncle's old german boarding school photos that he posted on Facebook, and there was plot, and my love of dolls multiplied by my love of genshin made my wishlist explode for the first time since maybe 2014 (it was normally a very reserved wishlist just a couple dolls long, I swear).

For the social aspect, I'll be honest, I'm still recovering from the shock of being doused in inspiration and trying to reconnect with the community. There's so so many new companies now, new dealers, new options... At the same time a lot of my go-to places to buy anything either no longer exist, only sell extremely limited quantities or are lacking in variety and I have to research and relearn everything from scratch. The community also feels more segmented and harder to reach (I just want to make some new friends, please!!!). Den of Angels is quieter compared to when I was active, and so is tumblr, while instagram has become nearly impossible to be on and interact with people... The marketplace is slower but still there (just found my grail of over 10 years not two weeks ago, I'm REELING). I can't find youtube creators anymore, and a lot of the content I used to consume was there before my break... and yet at the same time there seems to be more bjd owners than ever. Maybe is just a matter of getting acclimated again!

 

Welcome back, Grey. I've missed seeing your mods around. They were always interesting.

 

Wow what a great read, thanks for sharing! I definitely relate to a lot of what you said and it's really comforting to know that others have similar experiences. I definitely felt creatively bankrupt and depressed at the time I decided to pack away my dolls and leave them in their boxes. Before I left for college I bought my grail (SWITCH Holy Soseo) and packed him up a couple weeks later. And, similar to you, 4-5 years later his face is still blank, although I'm finally getting ideas for what I'm gonna do with him. With this fresh creative spark I haven't felt in years, I'm hoping he'll finally have a name and face after all this time.

I definitely feel you on the limited options with companies you once loved, too. It's really sad to see, in a way. I have yet to really break back into the social aspect of the community (other than posting here, of course), but I use to use Instagram and made some really nice friends there. Sadly I have lost touch with them, and I know Instagram's algorithm has changed wildly since I last used it, so it makes me reluctant to go back. I've also noticed this site is slower, too, which makes me a bit sad. I never got my marketplace access, but I hope I can be approved and hopefully find some of the dolls on my wishlist that have sadly been discontinued in my time away. I agree that it'll definitely take some time to get reacclimated, but hopefully we can both do it.

 

After 10~ years I finally decided to get back into the hobby and wow!! I feel like it's a whole new world. Was sad to see that D.I.M Doll are no longer in business, but excited to get into the hobby again. It feels just like when I saw my first BJD in 2008.

I quit the hobby when I was about 19-20. Had just gotten into a new friends group and I didn't want to tell them about my interests in BJDs because I was afraid that they would think it was weird.. Unfortunately, I forgot about the dolls while trying to catch up on other things in life. Now I'm 30 and very secure in myself, so the dolls are back.

 

I took a long break from buying dolls (and subsequently from the hobby) for about nine years (≈ 2013). I too no longer had the finances to support the hobby at the time. The hobby never really left my mind as I completed high school and college; I would occasionally log on to DoA but I used it less and less over the years. Throughout the time I was gone, I did keep my dolls and still feel bonded to them! I did, however, become detached from one of them and have since sold her recently.

I became interested in getting back into the hobby around November/December last year when I was about to graduate college since I would finally be able to save up for a doll and not have to worry about school. It was a little wild getting back in since I also realized that quite a few dolls I wanted were no longer available, there are even more companies with beautiful dolls (and some companies that changed styles), the spread on other social media platforms is more vast, etc. It almost felt overwhelming, but I found that getting back up to speed hasn't been as daunting of a task as I thought. I retained a lot of the knowledge I had and most of it wasn't outdated. Although it's sad that some of the dolls I wanted are gone, I love that there are even more options and I'm still discovering new ones. Not mention, it has been easier than ever to get information on companies and dealers, tutorials, artists, ordering and shipping questions, etc.

My first doll purchase after my hiatus is a Soul Doll Seo Jeong-U, who I'm still waiting for to be shipped (purchased in March); I also recently put a Ringdoll Hua Cheng on layaway. I'm very excited for both of them! As for the dolls I already have, I have newfound motivation to complete the two who are not complete, and to update the other two to give them a new wardrobe that will better fit their characters.

Socially, I haven't been super active within the community apart from posting here, and that hasn't changed within those nine years. I'm content with where I'm at right now on my journey back into the hobby, but there are still things I would like to learn about or try eventually! I'm just glad that the community has a larger reach than ever so this information, whenever I may need it, is available!

 

I only very recently returned to the hobby, after having been fairly active between 2004-2014; various house moves, having to homeschool my youngest for a year, getting married and a whole slew of IRL issues meant the dolls basically got put on a backburner. they went into boxes and crates for the last house move and just basically didn't come out again until the past couple of months when I had the sudden urge to shell my WoW RP main character, Derenly, into doll form and embarked on modding my Lishe into a boy, sculpting blood elf ears and so forth. The project has definitely reawoken my interest in the dolls again; I dug Marius, my Dollshe V2 Hound, out and gave him a new face-up plus a new replacement wig for his old red one that was looking very ratty after all these years. And now I'm pondering hunting through to find which box my Minifee Shiwoos are in....

Socially, I've joined the BJD Discord server (I'm far more active on discord than I am anywhere else, so it was a logical step for me) and posted for the first time in years in the small little UK Facebook BJD group that I used to be active in; the folks there made me feel very welcome as a returnee, and I've had an invite to join some of them on their next doll outing here in London. I'm not hugely active on Instagram, though I've been posting the progress pics of Derenly there.

I don't have any plans for doll purchases at the moment; I'm focused instead on rediscovering my love for my existing dolls, one or two at a time.

 

I left the hobby around the 2016-2017 era, as I had just clawed through a pretty bad break up and had a lot of mental health issues I needed to sort out. After neglecting to do anything with my dolls for a while--even letting them collect dust--I put them away and wasn't sure if I would return. At the end of 2021 I became really interested in the Gem of Doll Capricorn and purchased her. Not long after that (or maybe even a little before that), I returned to the social media side of the hobby.

It's really interesting to see how some things have changed, and others haven't. Some doll communities are more utilized than others, and Instagram has definitely become a place for doll photos, which is great! I'm slowly picking up on things I missed since I was gone, like doll companies that have closed shop. Other than that, I'm staying pretty busy updating my current collection, since I completely changed a few of them. I also sold a few dolls so I can add different dolls to my collection. It's kinda fun to see even how I myself changed in how I display my dolls.

 

Big same!! I've been in the hobby for over half my life at this point, so prepare for a ridiculously long story lol.

Spoiler: TLDR had some bad times, took a break lol

I took a break from the online side of the hobby for several years, and to some extent the hobby altogether. In 2010 I had a bad experience at a doll meetup at a convention where the locals literally didn't speak to anyone that wasn't a member of their local comm, and us visitors just kinda hung out by ourselves a few feet away like two teen cliques in a cafeteria. I had moved away from my own local community for school and it was pretty demoralizing. It made me miss my local comm terribly, but my local friends were at more stable points in their lives, moving for work and getting promotions, and it was hard to get people from the wider area to be willing to travel for meets (to me, South Florida is like, Dade and Broward county, the coastal bottom right corner of the peninsula, but to some people "South Florida" was pretty much anything south of Orlando and they'd be unwilling to commute but expecting us to travel every time we tried to make plans, lmao, classic local hobby comm problems). Looking back on it, there was kind of an unspoken expectation among a lot of people in the BJD hobby that "doll meet-up" meant huge tables full of dolls, dozens of people, and that was pretty unrealistic outside a few select cities or special events like conventions. I was flat-out told "I like to see a lot of dolls at meetups, so if it's only gonna be like four of us I'm not coming" a couple of times, but I think that sentiment was more widely held than people admitted at the time. So as our core group of locals got more and more unable to make it, the local BJD scene kinda sputtered and died for a while (at least for me).

Not even two months later I had a terrible experience where a BJD package of mine was misdelivered to a nonexistent address six hours away from my home and it was never found or returned. It took a heavy toll on my BJD enthusiasm, I'd look at my dolls and think about the lost package and just not be able to enjoy myself. I slowed down taking photos, let alone posting them. I'd occasionally order a new outfit or two, occasionally get out a doll and play with it a bit, but that was pretty much the extent of it. I had a gradual reentry a few years later as Mint on Card (rest in peace) announced its closing, and saw an uptick in my BJD activity, but I was still spending most of my time enjoying other hobby dolls (shoutout to Monster High for somehow keeping my mental health afloat as an exploited first-year teacher lmao).

I think taking a break from the hobby worked out pretty well in the long run, because I take it way less seriously now than I did as a kid. All the old drama that used to come to the fore every day is nonexistent - be glad we don't have a Debates forum anymore y'all, holy moly - and we've had so many pioneers be brave enough to test out materials, paints, sculpting styles, the hobby is a much less hostile place than it used to be! Not to be an old fogey but I remember back in the day the cadres of people who made sure we all knew that the only sealants they felt were acceptable were MSC and Tamiya UV Cut. "You're using sealant for MINIATURES?! Ugh, you're going to melt your doll and die, I wouldn't even THINK of doing such a thing on my precious resin when those products are made for cheap mass-produced plastic" type of comments, lol, there were a lot of folks who were very vocally anti-experimentation back then! Without all the people looking for creative solutions, and advocating for and creating different body types for dolls themselves, this hobby would be way more one-dimensional than it feels to me today. I'm gonna drop another old fogey comment, lol, I remember seeing/hearing a few remarks about how making and casting your own BJD was seen as a foolish newbie move, as if people dropping thousands on molds and air compressors were out here saying "I can't afford to buy a BJD, so I'll make my own!" So glad that the artist doll community has flourished, and that so many artists are out here finding the support and market for their work they deserve! That was a great thing to find now that i'm getting more active.

I think the isolation of the pandemic brought me closer to my dolls, they're not people but it feels more like company than an empty room to have them around so it made me feel less alone! My collection also really took off the last few years or so, I've found dolls I never imagined I would be able to bring home as tastes change and my old favorites become less and less high demand status symbols. I even brought home the first BJD sculpt I ever saw, the one who got me into the hobby! It's so nice to be back and connecting with people, though that's still a challenge for me lol. Here's to us returning folks, welcome back everybody!!

 

Those are all really good observations! You're right, it's really nice to see things more open and less toxic and gatekeep-y. One of my favorite things about bjds is how customizable they are, so I love seeing the experimentation. And as someone who has plans on sculpting my own doll, I can confirm that it'd definitely be a lot cheaper to just buy a doll outright lol, especially if you count the hours of labor as a cost.

 

I just came back myself from an extended break. So sad to see so many companies I knew and loved gone; but a few are still around and some new places to discover too. Glad to see DOA is still here too

 

I took a year hiatus after my son was born. Wthin recent years I've fallen back into it really hard though.

 

I walked away from the dolls in 2017, for some reason I couldn't stand them, I guess that in the past I bought so many I didn't know what to do with them. I'm slowly getting back into being around them.

 

I started collecting in 2008, I think? I was very prolific in the hobby until I graduated from college in 2015 (I had scholarships, a job and was living at home so I had a lot of disposable income). Then I kind of dropped out, due to a combination of building health issues, lack of money, and also shifting interests. I came back to buy one doll in 2017 (I think?) because I happened to find her by accident and she was perfect for the main character for a story I was working on at the time, then I bought another doll in 2020 from a company whose dolls I admired for a long time, but I had no energy for doing anything with her so I left her bald and naked in her box.

Recently I've been recovering from the health issues and decided I needed more hobbies for my own mental health. So I came back to dolls, and I've been having a lot of fun re-discovering things like crafting (turns out, not a big fan of that anymore) and photography. Also while I was gone, all of the fashion doll people went ahead and started making incredible BJD shoes. I remember back in like 2012-ish, all shoes looked so clunky and doll-like... now you can get these perfect replica miniatures, down to the teeny little stitches.

 

I was introduced to BJD through Dream of Doll, joined DOA in 2010 and got my first doll from them 2012. I've been averaging about a doll a year since then, so haven't really had a hiatus from doll collecting. 2018 I didn't have anyone ordered, I was feeling less connected with my crew 2019 as I was after a dedicated space for them and didn't really have one. They mostly stayed in the cupboard on shelves.

We were planning a home build and so a lot of my time and headspace was taken with house design and planning. This kept going over the pandemic. I got a doll I'd been looking forward to for years, a doll choice from Iplehouse, and she got taken out for box opening photos and then after a month put in her box for over a year.

2020 sucked for everybody. I was the same, increased anxiety and depression. As an autistic person, having my routines completely shaken up when needing to drop everything and work from home was very hard. My hobby space became my work space and I basically didn't engage with dolls at all.

2021 we moved in with my parents while our home build happened, all my dolls went into storage for a year. I was desperate for doll content and that's when I moved to Instagram. I lurked and worked on transferring my doll pics from Flickr since their change of limits for the free accounts.

We moved into our new home beginning 2022, but I was so tired from everything I just took everyone out of their boxes and they stood behind a couch for months. It's only been in the last few months I've started being active on DOA. I don't have their new home built yet, but there is now a cubby. I'm back on DOA looking a photography tips and equipment. I have something to look forward to. And that's really nice, considering the last few years.

 

I discovered bjds back in 2007 and I was absolutely awestruck by them. I purchased my first affordable doll in late autumn of that year and it became an instant obsession for me. It felt like something I had been wanting my entire life but just didn’t know it, if that makes any sense!

By 2011 I had 5 dolls and still adored the hobby, however I also got married that year and moved cross country, into a small apartment. That was the year I reluctantly had to pack my dolls safely away. I had no intention of taking a break from the hobby but it just wasn’t something I could fit in my life along with a new marriage, new far away home, new job, and as a couple years passed, becoming a new mom!

Fast forward to 2015 and I’m still “out” of the hobby but my mom and sister (who also collect) surprise gifted me with a Fairyland Liria Minifee. Just like the first time I found BJDs, I was completely awestruck by her. I still didn’t have any space to keep dolls out the way I liked but I would keep her in her box and take her out here and there to admire. Getting Liria was the jumpstart to me re-joining the bjd hobby/community, I just loved her so much.

We moved cross country again in 2016 and I had a little more space for dolls. I ended up re-homing my original dolls that had been boxed away for so long and started fresh with my Liria. Since then I have stayed active in the hobby and enjoy each and every one of my dolls. Yay!

Initially it did feel like there was a big learning curve getting back into it. Photobucket wasn’t really a thing anymore for sharing photos, so I discovered Flickr, which even now isn't as popular of a “go-to” place to see dolls anymore. Companies had changed big time or were sadly on their way out, re-cast dolls had become a much bigger threat, and favorite seamstresses were no longer creating.

It didn’t feel like a small community anymore, it had exploded! Some people have said it was easier to make friends with the larger community, but I feel like it’s had the opposite effect for me. I know there are a lot of wonderful people in the community but I don’t care for the “keeping up with the Jones’s” mentality that seems to have taken hold. When I started out back in 2007 other collectors seemed so much friendlier, outgoing and welcoming to one another. I think people were more enthusiastic to know others who shared the interest because there weren’t too many of us out there.

When I came back from my hiatus I think my favorite change was how much styles of dolls had also changed, I found that part truly fun! I spent so much time exploring new, more modernized outfits and shoes, details had become even better, and Etsy was amazing! Everything felt more personalized. There were so many talented face up artists offering their services, custom made wigs, eyes galore for whatever style you were looking for. I think that really brought me even closer to my dolls and has kept me in the hobby all of this time. You can really bring your ideas and visions to life and create unique and beautiful dolls.

 

I got my first doll in 2009! a Bobobie Ariel! wow..ok now I feel old! lol
Several years ago I had to take a step back to focus on my career. I have returned to the hobby with a new ferver and a larger budget thanks to career promotions. (young me thought Bobobie were spendy! lol)
I am sad to see that many companies are gone, I have a few regrets that I didn't get and now are discontinued. I may never find a Dream of Doll Petcha Elf now that they are gone.
My collection and taste have refined themselves, But I still have most of my dolls. I am glad to be back and am looking forward to finding all the cool new companies and sculpts!

 

I took a hiatus from around 2016-2017. I still kept my BJDs and adored them, they just got less attention as I focused on OT dolls. Unfortunately that OT community was not a good one, and I stopped being so into that hobby.

Returning to DoA and getting more invested in my BJDs felt like slipping on a well loved sweater. There may have been changes in doll trends, companies or what have you. What I remember most from my return was a blessed lack of drama.

 

It’s really nice reading peoples stories.

 

I'm also in a similar situation, while I've never really considered myself to be "in the community" my interest in dolls has been off and on since 2007 - mostly off. I really struggled in that time to find dolls I actually cared about and connected with, and had a lot of personal issues to deal with that left me with no time or motivation to do much creative at all, in some cases, let alone be active in a hobby where it didn't seem like I could find something that worked for me.

What has changed now is that the past few years have seen a massive improvement in my mental health and creativity, including the creation of a lot of original characters who are dear to my heart. Art, writing and video games are my main playgrounds, but I had tossed around the idea of making something like tabletop miniatures of them just for fun, feeling like BJDs just wouldn't work because of the number of times I'd tried and failed to get involved with them. However, some friends who are more into dolls than me lead me to discover there is a lot of variety out there these days, particularly in the realm of mature tinies who are much more along the lines of how I'd like to represent my characters. So, while I still feel tentative at the moment due to past experiences, I'm feeling like I'm in a good time and place to explore the possibilities again.