After the Astro pause, did I miss it?

[glend]

I packed up all my gear, cleaned out the observatory, put the mount in storage, etc early this year. My intention was to not have to deal with cold weather this year, and to take a long break to see if the passion might resurface. Honestly for the past couple of years I had been running out of steam; I had hundreds of completed images, from thousands of Subs, Terabytes of data, and simply found no interest in going back over the same old sky. I can hear you thinking, how can you run out of interest, targets, etc, yeah, yeah, I used to think like that. I switched over to EAA, thinking that would reduce workload and still allow me to see the important things and events, and that did the trick for awhile.
This week I actually put the mount back on the pier, because my grand children are coming for Christmas and I wanted to be able to introduce them (with their short attention spans) to the night sky. So setting up for visual only with my ED150DX, which is my last remaining scope. Does this mean I am back to the madness? No, I enjoyed the long break, and have no desire to get back to anything more serious, but it's nice that I kept something to play with when the mood strikes.
Age has alot to do with it, maybe, certainly I am more considerate of how I spend my time. There are other things I want to do as well, especially since La Nina is determined to extend the pause.;)

[Startrek]

Glen,
I would assume you have been involved in the hobby for decades and if so , can totally understand where your coming from.
Myself , I started in the hobby towards retirement only 4 to 5 years ago , I’m now 61 and retired.So in my situation I have limited time left in the hobby ( 12 to 15 years ) pending health. I doubt whether I will ever get bored or lose interest with it. So much more to learn and do with both visual and astrophotography
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and experiences this year

Cheers
Martin
PS: Haven’t heard from Alex for a while , hope he’s ok

[bojan]

I started with this hobby 60 year ago... and the interest is still as strong as ever (OK, maybe not quite, I was totally mesmerized with it when I was teenager.. and yes, there were some gaps because life happened now and then).

So - yes, you are back :D

[floyd_2]

I've been going with astronomy for about 32 years, and my interest has come and gone over that time. I've sold my scopes and eyepieces, only to buy it all again later on, more than once. This round I've finally realised that I've never be out of it so have kept my latest crop of gear and turned to EAA to make life easier / allow me to see things that my aging eyes and location no longer allow me to see. Once you have the bug there's no walking away from astronomy for good - there's just taking a breather from time to time :) Hang on to that last scope Glen.