Regarding Lego compared to other hobbies...
I have a lot of hobbies, Lego being one of them. I tend to spread my money around all of them fairly equally when all is said and done.
I collect movies - I have over 1500 DVDs and another 300 Blu Rays with a black out media room with all the bells and whistles to support this hobby.
I collect and play board games - I own around 150 board games.
I collect and play video games - Over 500 physical games for 360, PS3, Wii, Xbone, PS4, WiiU, 3DS, and Vita. I also have a top of the line gaming PC with a 3x24" monitor set up.
I collect and build Lego - Lord only knows how many sets I have. Hundreds at least.
I build movie props - I've done a full Ghostbuster outfit and am working on a set of Star Lord guns and outfit for display/cosplay.
I collect and paint miniatures and scratch build scale model scenery - I've been doing this for almost 30 years.
I collect and read all manner of Warhammer 40k, from novels and codex/rule books, to assembling and painting armies - another 30 year hobby that goes hand in hand with the above.
Any one of the above hobbies is
expensive as hell. Juggling them all can get very interesting indeed. My interests in my hobbies tend to swing like a pendulum though. Some things get put away only for another to get dragged out and replace it. I'm almost 40 so I have been collecting many of these things for years or even decades. Time and hobbies add up! Any single one of my hobbies/collections is enough to impress anyone into that particular scene.
Pros: I'm often able to wait for sales or otherwise good deals on the majority of my hobbies. If I just had one or two, I would be spending a lot more to maintain a single/couple of hobbies. Another really interesting thing is the tendency for stockpiling of hobbies. For Instance, my Lego collection has a solid 20-30 sets built up again because I buy them on sale and file them away while I'm currently focused on another hobby. It's actually pretty cool. My backlog of video games would make you pass out. So would my board game collection. I have a dozen movies on deck to watch that I own at any given time. It's awesome working on several projects between multiple hobbies and having them all finish right around the same time.
Cons: Sometimes I have lots of "must haves" for each hobby release right at the same time. I do have a hobby budget and it gets a tad frustrating when 3 video games, a new 40k Codex, a board game expansion, and a Blu Ray boxed set all come out during the same week. That happens more than you would ever imagine.
All this brings me to an interesting observation. I am not a
super fan of any one hobby. I consider a superfan as someone who chooses a single hobby and dumps every cent into it. All of the above hobbies that I have are filled with super fans that never cease to blow my mind. I've seen guys into Warhammer 40k easily spend $1-2k a month on that stuff. I've seen people so devoted to Lego that they do the same thing. It's all they focus on. That's not a bad thing at all. Quite the opposite in fact! It makes me realize that if I did stop my other hobbies and focused on a single one, I could easily be a super fan. I just prefer spreading the money and time investment between lots of different things.
Just for fun, here is a pic of my haul from last Xmas that partially illustrates my point!
Some of the best things in life for me are:
Building Lego with my wife and kids while we watch movies. Also with Lego, it's building an entire series at once.
Playing WoW on my PC with my wife next to me doing crafts while we binge watch a "new to us" series via Netflix after the kids go to bed. (I have a 44" TV mounted above my PC for this purpose!)
Playing board games with family and friends. As my children age, they are always ready for a new challenge or game mechanic. I love hearing them try and explain our family game nights to their friends, lol.
A quiet afternoon of painting miniatures with music playing in the background. It's so relaxing and fun. I feel ultra creative with this hobby and am always super satisfied with having results/progress at the end of a hobby day. If you put a solid 8 hours into this hobby, you really feel like you accomplished something.
Anyway, this is just a rambling mess of a post kicked of by someone lamenting their former hobbies. I think every hobby has merit. There is nothing lost if you honestly found a bit of peace and happiness while doing it.