Behind a chair in the corner of our living room sits a tray on top of a cardboard box. On top of this tray lives a half-built set of Legos collecting dust, the little bags of bricks that will complete it safely stored in the cardboard box. For how long it’s been sitting there? I honestly couldn’t tell you. A rough estimate would be six to eight months.

Under the table in front of the window in my office sits a cotton bag overflowing with skeins of yarn brought home as souvenirs from around Europe. In that same room stands a cupboard full of pottery and glassware from my days of food photography, and the walls are filled with books I have yet to read.

In the garden shed, I have shelves and drawers full of everything I need to grow flowers and vegetables. The kitchen cabinets are filled with everything one could ever dream of to make almost anything from scratch. And somewhere, I still have a box with materials from when I decided to learn watercolours.

Something I’m not quite used to fifteen months after having moved up north is how short the season of Summer is. In my old life, the warm weather would easily last until the first half of October. But after we came home from our holiday last week, the Autumn storms have already settled in. And with the change in seasons came a change in my preferred hobbies.

A couple of days ago, I asked my wonderful husband to dust off the Lego set in the corner of my living room – something my lack of fine motor skills won’t allow me to do – so I can continue building it. His first response: “Is it that time of year already? The “R” is not even in the month yet.” After a bit of confusion, I realised he was right: I tend to only build Legos in the last couple of months of the year.

All my other hobbies seem to have a set time frame as well. Watercolours and crochet in Winter, planting seeds and writing recipes in Spring, food photography and tending to the garden in Summer, and building Legos in Autumn. There are only two things I seem to do year-round: reading books and playing computer games – but I do take regular breaks from both.

One of the things neurodivergent people get mocked for (although perhaps it’s mainly us laughing at ourselves) is starting a new hobby on a whim, only to abandon it weeks later. Something I feel is not entirely fair. Our interests are very diverse, and the only way to find out what you enjoy doing is by trying out as many things as possible. Besides, we’re also known for our all-or-nothing mentality, so having more than one hobby at a time might be something we’re not entirely comfortable with. However, I came up with an excellent way to rebrand our ever-changing interests, and I’ve named it seasonal hobbies.

The joy of having seasonal hobbies is that you’re allowed to lose interest after a while. They don’t require consistency, and it’s not a problem when you’ve left something unfinished. So, you have six unfinished crochet dinosaurs? Fine, let’s get back to them next year. You haven’t touched your watercolours in three years? Whatever, they’ll hold. Your Legos are collecting dust? Wipe them down when you’re ready to continue. Because losing interest for now doesn’t mean you can never come back. And if anyone has a problem with this new way of approaching your hobbies, let it be theirs. Life is too short to fixate on just the same three things.