How open are you about your Lego passion?

[nielsvdv]

Since I am an artist, composer, music producer and orchestral arranger I make a million tiny or big creative decisions every day. This is my life - and I LOVE it! But, to build a large Lego set brings peace to my busy brain. Everything is thought out. All is clear in the building instructions. I get balance. This is also what I tell my friends when I celebrate Lego not only to be the best toy in the world, but to bring a grown up down to earth, back to basic and out on a travel to inner space! I will never ever be private about this healer.

thats for the most the same for me.

but for my girlfriend, thats exactly the same explanation. i introduced here to lego about a Year ago. i bought her one set, creator. my girl is often very stressed, and this has an effect on her shoulders, they are tensed, a bit weaker and blocked. during lego builidng, her mind finds peace, and she loves to build by instructions, so the thinking for once is done for her.

after some building she is relaxed, and the shoulder thingy is completely gone for half a day or so. really works for her.

disadvantage: every time we are in a toyshop or legostore, she just goos to the lego shelf, picks the box that she wants and try's to persuade me to buy it for her...... she likes creator... and as a technic afol, i wished liked technic more... so i could use the bricks....she and her persuading eyes, smile, cute face.. :s can't help it!!! help me :P

Edited June 8, 2011 by nielsvdv

[Niku]

thats for the most the same for me.

but for my girlfriend, thats exactly the same explanation. i introduced here to lego about a Year ago. i bought her one set, creator. my girl is often very stressed, and this has an effect on her shoulders, they are tensed, a bit weaker and blocked. during lego builidng, her mind finds peace, and she loves to build by instructions, so the thinking for once is done for her.

after some building she is relaxed, and the shoulder thingy is completely gone for half a day or so. really works for her.

disadvantage: every time we are in a toyshop or legostore, she just goos to the lego shelf, picks the box that she wants and try's to persuade me to buy it for her...... she likes creator... and as a technic afol, i wished liked technic more... so i could use the bricks....she and her persuading eyes, smile, cute face.. :s can't help it!!! help me :P

A woman who supports and shares your hobby is not easy to find.

Marry her¡

Just kidding, well it is glad to hear your girlfriend relaxes with LEGO, don´t know why but my older sister is the same.

She is an architect, and since I have returned to the hobbie has helped building some sets. It relaxes her too.

Edited June 8, 2011 by Niku

[Miss Kyle]

I dragged my significant other to the Eurobricks meetup, he had a blast and joined the board. That's the way it's got to be :D

[madoka]

I've learned to be generally quiet about my Lego activities. Even other AFOLs are generally shocked over how much Lego I have. In fact, recently I made some purchases at a Lego store. After the salesperson looked up my VIP point total and how much I spent, he called me "clinically insane."

[Paul B Technic]

I am starting to be more "public" with my Lego hobby, so far I have got some good feedback on it.

[domdubya]

I've learned to be generally quiet about my Lego activities. Even other AFOLs are generally shocked over how much Lego I have. In fact, recently I made some purchases at a Lego store. After the salesperson looked up my VIP point total and how much I spent, he called me "clinically insane."

That is quite superb!

[technicmad]

I let anyone know, most of them are secretly interested and want to know more about it :)

[SilvaShado]

Since my husband and I are both fans (we came out of the dark ages together when we bought two fantasy era castle sets from Kmart), it's easy to talk about our hobby with family and friends. They've always been very supportive.

At first, I was pretty timid about saying anything to my coworkers. But I started to talk to some of my closer coworkers and they were very interested and supportive. Over the last couple of months, I've become very open about it. My desk at work is now decorated with small LEGO sets and some of my coworkers now stop me in the hallway to tell me about their LEGO adventures with their children. It's quite fun to hear about their experiences.

Also, they are quite amazed at what my husband and I build. Many of them were quite excited when we told them that out latest creation was in the LEGO store near us in one of the display cases. Several went out that weekend to see it, even though I had shown them pictures, they wanted to see it in person.

Oh, and I made a retirement gift for one of my supervisors out of LEGO and she absolutely loved it!

So now, I am much more open and confident about being an Adult Fan of LEGO.

[Hoboman]

To give the simple answer, I am not. There are a few people who know, but not many. I just do not want to deal with the judgement.

[technicmad]

To give the simple answer, I am not. There are a few people who know, but not many. I just do not want to deal with the judgement.

I guess the trick is not caring what other people think about you... I learnt how to do that a long time ago :)

Her main job, though, is keeping their ever expanding LEGO collection organized so that when Will is ready to build, she can find him what he needs.

Haha, can I get you to talk to my wife?

[Hoboman]

I guess the trick is not caring what other people think about you... I learnt how to do that a long time ago :)

While I understand the point you are trying to make, I have to respectfuly disagree that the "trick" is to not care. Sense I have seen how their judgement has stood in the way of a job promotion or other opportunity for those who the main stream think is abnormal, I will keep my personal life to myself. It is hard enough to move forward without the added "did you know he still plays with toys." kind of inter-office gossip.

[technicmad]

While I understand the point you are trying to make, I have to respectfuly disagree that the "trick" is to not care. Sense I have seen how their judgement has stood in the way of a job promotion or other opportunity for those who the main stream think is abnormal, I will keep my personal life to myself. It is hard enough to move forward without the added "did you know he still plays with toys." kind of inter-office gossip.

Fair enough. Since I work in IT and am already a hard core geek/nerd, perhaps people make more allowances. Or they're all secretly the same

[Dazmundo]

I am a secondary school teacher and do not hide my interest but obviously don't often talk to the kids about it. However I do have a Lego minifig torch keyring hanging from my bag and my Lego calendar sits above my desk in my classroom and that has started a couple of conversations in the last couple of days, One boy asking me where I got the minifogs from and one girl who I pointed out looked like the cheerleader figure (she is blonde and a cheerleader)

D

[SilvaShado]

Haha, can I get you to talk to my wife?

Having trouble getting her interested in LEGO?

Has she read the book LEGO: A Love Story? It's a very good read and introduces the wide world of AFOLs.

[Ogre]

Having trouble getting her interested in LEGO?

Has she read the book LEGO: A Love Story? It's a very good read and introduces the wide world of AFOLs.

Great book.

[Aanchir]

Great book.

My mom finished reading it yesterday. She clearly enjoyed it a lot, and she's trying to get my dad to read it, without much success. He's the bigger FOL between the two of them but not the bigger book-reader.

[Gregorovich]

I'm not too open about it. My 8 siblings know, and they tease me about it. My youngest brother and the twins (3rd and 4th youngest) kind of like it, as I sometimes let them use my bricks, and I sometimes help them build some things (though the twins are better than me ). My parents don't talk about it often. They're fine with me having an interest in it, but they don't like me spending a lot of money on it.

My closer friends know about it, but my friends that aren't so close don't know. During high school I never mentioned it to anyone, because I knew I'd get made fun of for it. Now that we're all older though they're not too bothered.

I always feel extremely embarrassed when buying LEGO. When I go to the counter, I can feel my face going red . I'm at that annoying age when I seem to old to be buying LEGO for myself, but am a bit too young to be buying it for my kids (I know some people my age have children, but there's not too many of them).

I hope someday I'll be able to be so open about my hobby, because being embarrassed about sometimes stops me getting new sets.

[Mythos]

Everyone who knows me knows my LEGO habits, heck the biggest room in my house is dedicated as my LEGO room, along with a spare bedroom for storage.

[Yatkuu]

What a fascinating topic… I have read it all, feels like reading my own story sometimes. I keep coming back to it from time to time and I have been thinking about bringing my own perspective… well here it is.

Caveat: I’m not the most optimistic person on the planet when it comes to human nature.

I had a DA of +- 20 years (last purchased set was Imperial Outpost 6263, gosh I still love that one), only came out about a year and a half ago – I guess it’s a pretty long DA. So much has changed during that timeframe… starting with the internet. I suppose if the net had been around back then I’d probably never have dropped the hobby. It’s my parents who kinda forced on me the idea that it was time for me to move on to something more… mature? … I know, silly, but what can you do when you are the only kid around still playing with Lego?

Anyway, no big trauma here (mom, dad, I love you nonetheless I know you did what you think was best for me!), I guess I’m back in now and it’s all for the best and I’ll sure never do the same mistake with my own kid!

What matters is that the essence of this discussion - being open or not about the hobby - is the same whether you are 12, 30 or 50.. it’s all about social pressure and many have described it very well in this forum. It’s just never easy to be different, period. Whether you’re too short, too tall, gay, bald, AFOL… you’re just part of a minority.

The most important thing is to be understood by your loved ones, the rest doesn’t matter.

The huge majority of people are just dumb and follow the mass pre-formatted way of thinking, follow the mainstream, that’s just the way it is. I suppose I should be more concerned about getting a nicer car, a job promotion, sports.. I don’t know, the things that the majority of people think is more suitable to someone in the early 30 with a decent social position.

Well, I’m not really into those things – thank god I’m not obsessed with Lego either – I guess what I’m mostly into is to be creative, to find means to express my ideas, my feelings.

Depending on your personality, you can look at it from different angles; you could say that we – AFOLS - are in a way “superior” to the vast majority of people because we can create – express ourselves trough means that are just out of reach of most narrow minded people. The truth is most people will ever only see Lego as a toy, and there is nothing we can do about it. You could try to explain, show the last creations from Tyler & Nannan – sure people might be impressed but the truth is no matter what they’ll say I’m convinced that best case scenario they’ll mostly feel sorry for you.

Ok, sorry I had to let it all out – you’ve been warned (see the warning up there!)

Back on the subject, not everything is bad though, and I am pretty open about the hobby it’s just that I don’t kid myself on what most people really think. You might then wonder – why don’t you keep it just to yourself? – well, that’s thanks to you folks. When I post something here I usually get great feedbacks – hell, to my surprise I even won a contest here! So that tells me that I’m not too bad at what I do and that I should not be ashamed of it. (I’m not saying that an AFOL that sucks big time shouldn’t advertise on his hobby, I’m just saying it’d probably be more difficult to manage in the open).

So to conclude, I want to thank the community for being there and express my sympathy to whoever has trouble dealing with the social pressure towards what we do because that’s not going to change.

[Artifex]

I'm quite satisfied about how open I am about my Lego passion.

My girlfriend, close family and close friend know about it, and I have no trouble talking about it with distant friends, relatives, strangers and people who find out about my Lego passion.

More often than not, I link cool MOCs, WIPs and Lego-related stuff on Twitter, so I guess most people who know me also know about my passion.

I'm no preacher, though. I like Lego and that's something about me, not something that I think should be about others too. It's okay if some people like football, cinema, GIJoe or fast cars and others do not. For me, it's all about how YOU feel about your passion, not other people.

Sometimes I feel a bit odd when I see my avatar and signature here on EB. It's got Ozzy Osbourne, GIJoe and Lord of the Rings Online, other things that I like. Maybe an Ozzy/GIJoe minifig should be my avatar, or Lega Star Wars/Lego Harry Potter should be on my sig. But you know what? It's just like that in every forum I'm part of.

[sharky]

I'm a huge toy collector in general, and Lego is a part of my hobby ever since I was a kid. When I started to get into my teen years my hobby got pushed aside for other things I was interested in, mainly music, academics, and girls. I still had my collection, but I was not actively collecting or talked about it much. My parents never gave me a hard time about and didn't really have a problem with it.

When I got out of college and had a real job and making good money I started collecting toys again. However, my interests were in the high end Japanese anime related toys and collectibles. Later I got into more Star Wars and GI Joe action figures. These days I've focused my attention on Lego in a big way. Today I have 2 display cabinets in my formal living room dedicated to various toys from my collection. I change it out every so often. Most recently I had a Lego Ferrari display on one shelf. At work I also have a Lego Ferrari Truck and race car on the top shelf near my desk. At work I try to keep my toys auto related so that it seems more appropriate. Being an engineer most of my co-workers think my toys are cool. They always take an interest when I swap out toys to display at work.

Life is too short to waste time worrying about what others will think. It all comes down to your own personality and how mature a person you are regardless of any toy/Lego collecting hobbies. If you carry yourself with a high self esteem and maturity people will not think of you as childish for having a Lego hobby. In fact most people I know are quite interested in such things themselves even if they don't have such a passion for it as we do.

Edited July 2, 2011 by sharky

[Sergiu]

I'm not very open about my LEGO passion and unless someone asks about this, I rarely say anything. But despite this, almost everybody in my school knows that I like to build with LEGO, because I presented my MOCs in school, and the overall reaction was surprisingly positive, mostly because I build Technic rather then buildings or minifig scale cars. The first time I presented them only to my class colleagues, but then the physics teacher suggested me that I could participate in a local physics competition with my MOCs and so I did. With my

I won the first prize, but with the

I wasn't so successful.

I also appeared in short documentary about my school, which you can see here (romanian).

Also anybody who enters in my house will notice that I like LEGO as sets can be found in most rooms, even though I rarely buy sets now and exclusively from the Internet, in shops the prices are too high.

Edited July 23, 2011 by Sergiu

[ryanfitton]

My girlfriend and Mum knows, but none of my friends do :/

[Final Exit]

I'm pretty open, I don't hide it. In fact the more know the more "come out" as being adult fans

[L@go]

I've been reading through this topic and caught myself looking for a 'like' button like the one on Facebook... there are many very likeable posts here :)

Quite a few of my friends know about my Lego hobby. Only a couple know the full extent of the crazy money I've spent over the last three years after coming out of the Dark Age, and I'll probably keep it that way. I have a few of the Architecture sets and the Lunar Lander on display in my living room, but the real conversation starter is the giant Eiffel Tower located in a corner. Most people will just look at it in awe :)

I'm not really trying to keep my hobby a secret, but I'm never going to be too open about it, either. I have a quite high-profile job, which means quite a few people know who I am, and I'd like to be known for what I do professionally rather than for my hobby.

I went to London about a month ago and spent a fortune at the Lego Store at Westfield, where I met only friendly and smiling employees. I'm guessing they're quite used to adult collectors. There was a guy there who was buying something for his son, and he casually remarked that he wasn't really buying the set only for his son. I said, 'well, at least you've got a kid. I have no excuse...' upon which he started asking me if I had any recommendations in case he should decide to buy something bigger just for himself. It's the first time I've given a grown-up advice on Lego :)