To those who left the hobby and then returned....

@Urushi-kitty Just saying hi because it's nice to see a name again I remember well. I am sorry to see you lost one of your crew, and I keep my fingers crossed you will get back to where you want to be with your lovelies!

 

Things that got me out; it was so hard to get BJDs and accessories in the UK. My attempt to buy an affordable second hand one from overseas was not successful (looking back, I think I got liiiightly scammed) so I ended up with a vinyl Obitsu. Which wasn't great for me. I over-estimated the advantages and underestimated how important the feel of resin can be... And found sewing very frustrating.

What got me back? Covid. I made several cloth masks and discovered I actually enjoy sewing small things. I started to get good at it. I had beautiful fabric ready for masks, and no more friends who wanted some. WHat could I do with it? CLothes? Too small... doll clothes! Ooh, I wonder if it's easier to get BJDs now I'm older and more connected... hrm... Oh it is? Maybe I need some dolls to make lots of clothes for.

 

Left because I started working full time and just didn’t have the time nor the energy.

Came back because a friend recently-ish entered the doll hobby and reignited my resin love. Also I’m working part-time now. But that also means less funds for resin lol.

 

I never really quit the hobby but was unactive on DOA for the past couple of years. Until yesterday. The past years I have worked a lot and got 2 kids. Now they are a bit larger there is a bit more room for mom time

 

I guess I was never really into the hobby. I bought them impulsively because how beautiful they were and then for three years or so I went to meet-ups, made photo-stories, changed their looks... But then I lost interest and they have been in a box for years. I still find them beautiful and impressive, but that's all...

 

I left because I started to live abroad and I didn't really had teh time. Also, my dolls were too big to take them with me (and I started collecting way too many heads) and when we did dolls' meetings, we didn't take the dolls with us as they were too heavy to carry them.
I came back after I started following several bjd instagram accounts and watching my friends doing interesting things with their dolls
Also, I missed doing face-ups

 

For me it was mainly the cost. Especially because I was with an unsupportive partner at the time. I honestly felt guilty spending money on any hobby. Then we separated and I went from having one rent with two incomes to having one income. So it just wasn't easy, I moved around a bit and see my dolls were always in storage. Even the upkeep of the dolls I had was too much for me to handle. But with my recent move I took them back out and started working on face ups again on my practice heads and I just really missed it
You add on my depression and anxiety, and it was just not an easy hobby for me to stay in for a long time.
But I'm in a much better place, now. And I have supportive people and a better living environment, plus help for the depression and anxiety
I'm going to be getting my first dolls since coming back, and I couldn't be more excited.

 

Left the hobby for about 6 years due to simply not feeling like it was for me and was lacking any ideas in what I wanted to do with the two dolls I had at the time and just left them sit in their boxes for years. That was until I started to get the inspiration to recreate my DA Warden that then ended up with me finding the most gorgeous Granado sculpt I've ever seen and then it just spiraled from there.

 

I started selling the dolls I had when I was 18 or a little before that. I had always been very adamant about how you can grow up and still have dolls, so it wasn’t anything like that.
My dolls were partially sold due to newfound adult expenses, and partially because I wanted to be accepted by my new, older, adult friends.

I got back into dolls when, funnily enough, I was lonely. I didn’t have any friends that I could connect with, my family doesn’t want to understand me, and my therapist moved away.

I went on the Facebook market place and found a volks sdc that I thought would be good enough for me. He wasn’t the best looking in photos, but when I saw him in person, he’s my twin! We look crazy alike! I’m so grateful for him.

 

I got into the hobby for the first time back in 2007, when I was in high school, and I drifted out of it 2 years later when I went to college and that started keeping me crazy busy. The dorms weren't a safe place for dolls, so I left them home, and when I was home on breaks, I was distracted by other things.

I returned in 2014 for a little while, then left again because being active in the community was leading me to impulsively spend more than I had, which was creating financial issues. I also got really tired of the drama on Tumblr (never went back to that platform lol).

Recently I got back in because I was looking for fidget-y things for my desk & got a made-to-move Barbie to play around with and pose. That led me to the 1/6 Obitsus that pose really nicely, which led me to other dolls, which led me to "hey, I really miss my BJDs, let's make room to display them & get those out again!"

 

I was in the hobby off-and-on from 2012-2016, and took a longer hiatus from 2017-2020. I left the hobby for a bit, because I had gotten so busy with work and a serious relationship (which became a marriage last year ).

The thing that brought me back into the hobby was COVID. Being stuck at home, my husband encouraged me to get into some new hobbies to keep busy on the weekends. I dug my dolls out from their hidden spot (my husband had no idea they even existed until last year!), bought a couple new dolls, and started building a dollhouse for my tinies. Now I’m on DOA pretty much every day!

 

I was active in the hobby around 2010-2014, then I was pretty much inactive until 2019, because I moved abroad to study in university and I did not have my own flat, space or community. I was only sometimes reading forums and checking new releases but I did not really do anything with my dolls.

I started being more active again 2020, because of covid and boredom. Also I moved, so my new apartment has better space to do doll stuff. I wanted to start doing something artistic again and I kind of missed the BJD hobby. Now I am trying to stay active by doing lots of crafts for the dolls and strolling BJD forums like DOA and one in my native language.

 

Took a break because money/interest in other hobbies, came back because I really wanted to finish my OC groups and finally got a job.

 

Honestly I feel like my interests tend to be kind of cyclical, so I rotate between what I'm REALLY into every so often. I always come back to doll stuff when I'm in the mood for sewing and crafting. Especially over the last year+ in quarantine I've really enjoyed getting back into doll stuff because it's something that's easy to work on at the dining room table while chatting with my wife. BJDs are nice because I feel like it's very easy for me to put my doll down and then come back to him and pick up whatever project I was working on despite how much time may have passed.

 

I mainly had my dolls boxed up. I had to move to different apartments at the time and no place/room to take them out. Finally about 10 years(?) I have them out and got a few more.

 

Honestly....when I took a long hiatus from the hobby around 2008/09 (pretty much had subconsciously left the hobby at that point anyways), I can't really say what drove me to do so. It could've been a waning interest in the MSD I had, having to make a quick move across a couple states in 2009, tied in with some family drama on my mom's side from around that time, or the loss of the grandma that I was close to in 2008. It could've been any of those factors, or a combination of all of them.

I came back into the hobby around 2014. I was experimenting with some OC ideas for a story I spun off from a fanfic I was dedicated to (although taking art classes also motivated me with that). I took my MSD girl out of her box for the first time in years on a whim, and that hobby spark was rekindled. I had been dabbling with customizing Taeyang dolls (Pullip's bf, for the record; I admittedly have more of those than Pullip) as a couple of those OCs around that same time, when I decided I wanted to take it further and shell them as bjds instead. It was partially out of having drawing models for sketching, but also because bjds fit the style I was going for more than the Pullip/Taeyang aesthetic had.

I've been consistently dedicated to my crew since that time, although my online involvement tends to shift a lot. I was more active on social media (IG, Facebook, Tumblr, etc) for a time, then decided it wasn't for me before becoming either exclusive to DOA or dabbling in other online spaces here and there (a couple short spurts on Discord, being semi-involved online and in-person for a local meetup group that I've drifted away from, occasionally dipping my toes back into IG without seeking much engagement, etc). Nowadays I mainly lurk and post on DOA, or occasionally post photos up on IG. I tend to interact with my crew at least daily, even if it is just to look at them, or shift a pose.

I totally get that. It's a big part of why I don't get heavily invested in a lot of the social media aspects of the hobby—especially on IG or certain Facebook groups. The constant need for likes on IG or rabid commentary on certain subjects in some Facebook groups drove me away from participating in them. In some other pockets there was either a sense of elitism or very clique-like behavior that was a major turnoff to being involved in them. There is a lot of toxic behavior in the hobby, but that's not limited to just this hobby unfortunately. There's toxicity in pretty much every fandom or hobby (to differing degrees), it just a matter of weeding out the toxic parts and finding places where the more civil and kind folks hang out.

 

Life has a habit of getting in the way of hobbies... That's just the nature of the beast.

I've never completely walked away from the Doll Thing, but over the last (yikes) seventeen years there have definitely been periods when I was more- or less- active with the hobby than I have been at other points. Currently, I'm in an in-between period. Still here in some ways, but spending most of my free time with things other than the minions.

I'm just not a fan of social media, so the general move to those platforms over old-school web forums has accounted for some of my distance from "the fandom" these days. It doesn't get the entire blame, though. I don't engage much off-line anymore, either, after all. I hadn't been to a meet in about a decade, even before Covid... That can't be blamed on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

I guess I just don't feel the need to be very heavily engaged with the social aspects of it any more? I still have my dolls. I still like them... But I don't feel the need to post pictures constantly or chase an audience. I'm good over here on my own, chatting off-and-on about the dolls on DoA, and pretty much never mentioning them anywhere else.

 

I took a long break from 2016-2020 because I had gotten very busy with university like participating university sports team and going abroad for a cultural exchange program (that I had to quit my part-time job to stay focused with school and sports lol).

Then, I came back right after I graduated from the university during the first Covid outbreak. That time, I intended to just clean my room, but when I saw my dolls boxes laying at the corner of my room, all the good memories I had with them flooded back. So, I decided to restart the hobby again.