Ever Felt Fed Up With Stamping?

Welcome back John, nice yarn.
I reckon the hidden ingredient was the "sharing".

KGV,
Wow, nice story..
And heartfelt... I am glad he is going on.

I agree with Rod about the sharing. Great story.

Thanks for sharing. Great to have you back John, missed you.

I have at times felt "fed up" with many of my hobbies when other things get busy. This past winter/spring I didn't spend much time on my stamp collection at all. I contribute this to a variety of stressers that I have had this past year, however, versus the stamps making me fed up.

Now that I've gotten my health problems under control I'm trying to spend as much time as possible on the hobbies I enjoy before finals swallow my time up :).

If I begin to lose interest, or become frustrated at the lack of progress (such as inability to find a particular item), I buy a new handbook and head off exploring a different aspect of philately.

Yeah I about get fed up when I hear of HUGE stamp collections being given to people who know nothing about them...in the name of heaven why is there no justice ? They should be passed on to someone who loves stamps !!

Hi Tony,
If you want to feel rejuvenated, why not combine the stamp collecting and the writing? Pick a topic that you know something about but want to learn more. The do a little research and put together a nice article for publication. Add some stamps from your collection as illustrations and submit it to a stamp journal. Not only will you learn something new about your topic but you will be sharing with other collectors, too.

@1847CensusTaker
Actually I went back to my writing because I felt I was spending too much time on my stamps. Some time ago I wrote a bunch of mini biographies of prominent Indians who appeared on Indian stamps between 1950 and 2000 and more or less enjoyed it because it was a shared project. What I am working on now is not a shared project nor does it in any way touch on philately. I am working on an introductory history of the Mughal Dynasty in India from Babur to Alamgir and with stuff like:

Earlier on, nomadic wild Mongols had attacked and defeated the dominant Turks. The two peoples more or less joined into one and the Mongols adopted the Turki language. Babur spoke and wrote in this language and it remained the language of the Mughal emperors and their retinues particularly when "coded" messages were needed during times of war until the middle of the 18th century. The Turks and Mongols became so intertwined that it because difficult later on telling them apart. Babur descended from the Barlas Turks who were part of the Chaghatai Turks - a term hard to explain considering that Chaghatai was a son of Genghiz Khan, a Mongol. Separating the two peoples was further complicated by the fact that at an given time individuals called themselves whatever happened to be convenient to the moment. Babur definitely wanted to be considered Mongol. Of all his titles, he was most proud of his Gurgan, son-in-law to the Mongol royal family - a title he acquired when he married a Mongol princess descended from Genghiz Khan. On his tomb he had his genealogy described in painstaking detail showing him having a common ancestor with Genghiz Khan: Buzanchar, who, history tells us, was descended from a virgin of legend who was abducted and ravished by a moonbeam.

I doubt too many people will even be interested. But it is the perfect book: no one will read it, no printer will print it, and no publisher will publish it, so I feel under no obligation or rush to ever finish it.

I shall probably set my stamps aside for a while - after I update my Russia - and then wait and see what the future holds for me.

Hey Tony, I like the part about the ravishing by moonbeams. A very modern not touching kind of idea.

Sex sells you know. Just sneak a bit of history in there and you have a Da Vinci Code or something.

The writing is not dry, it moves right along. I like it anyway.

Hi Tony,
I am interested in history. I enjoy historical fiction. I just finished Robyn Young's Last of the Templar series which involved the interactions between the Christians, Muslims, and Mongols (to a very small extent) at the end of the Crusades. I would be interested in reading about the Mongols of this era. To me history is interesting when trying to understand how different groups interacted. Historical fiction is interesting because it humanizes the historical events. I do enjoy Dan Brown's works and I think I would enjoy your's.

Thanks a lot for the kind words, guys. My fascination with the Mughal Dynasty started when I was a kid and read Forster's A Passage to India. In it an Indian doctor tells a British friend that sometimes "he (the doctor) lies there and imagines riding into battle on a fully-caparisoned elephant behind the Emperor Alamgir". I had never heard the name Alamgir, so I looked him up, then found his father Shah Jahan and mother Mumtaz Mahal and the magic struck. I have been a Mughal Dynasty lover since. Although Akbar and Aurangzeb Alamgir were "bigger" emperors than Shah Jahan, I would nevertheless recommend Shah Jahan's memoirs (nama), if one can still find it, to get a real taste for the period. To get back on topic, all 6 emperors (Babur, Humayun, Akbar, Jehangir, Shah Jahan, Aurangzeb) have probably been depicted on Indian stamps - I only collect up to 1960 so I'm not too sure about recent issues.

My problem is I get fed up with many other stuff...WHICH CAUSES ME TO GO STAMPING!

If I did not have stamps to squander my time on I would probably go into depresssion..better to have my neurotic little stamp kingdom

Philby...YOU THE MAN!

That is why this board rocks!