As for me, I've had a solid 10-year run. Started in 2009 and the first few years was the most expensive.???? I was buying one MG kit per week at the very beginning, this went on for almost a year. It became a weekly thing with a couple of friends. We'd hang out at a mall where a lot of hobby shops are located, and we'd usually leave, each with a kit on hand. Great times.???? The weekly purchase eventually stopped, but I would still get kits regularly. Maybe a kit or two per month. So 2009-2019, Gunpla (and other toys) was a regular part of my life. I was definitely hooked and never thought about giving up the hobby. I did sell a lot though, but acquired new ones in return.????

Come 2019 and a life changing event happened to our family. I'm not gonna dive into it here, but at the time I slowly lost interest in the things I love. Around mid 2021 things got better for us and my mental health has started to improve, and I was slowly going back into the hobby but then life gives another gut punch. I then got worse at that time, that even friends noticed the shift in my demeanor. Definitely lost the spark to pretty much everything I love to do, not just Gunpla. I genuinely thought I was done at this point.

Things slowly got better and around the end of 2023 I started to improve again. I was out of the loop for a long while so I started browsing again, and that was when I made this Reddit account last year. That was when I started trying to get the spark again. And here we are today, never thought I'd be actually back into it, but I am. I've only acquired one new kit (MG Virtue) so far and have not built it yet. I clean my displays regularly and I enjoy taking pictures again. I treasure each kit that I have again, kinda like I used to back then. And I know life is gonna happen no matter what, that's just how it is. It may seem silly to some, but having a hobby helps. At the present time, I try to keep the positivity alive, and I don't see myself being out of this hobby. ????

*And I can't believe I never noticed how tall the MG Shin Musha is. I've had it since 2009 and never realized how tall it actually is. I've always thought it's just the RX-78-2 in a different armor.???? Maybe because I've always had it displayed on a separate shelf. It was my Mom's favorite as well, cause she loves the color red. Everytime she saw it she would say "that one's really beautiful." ????