Why Mustard?

Well, I need to begin with the obvious: I'm not a big fan of mustard. I might even say I don't like it outside of a cheap street hotdog.
The phrase "to mustard" became a slang term within my friend group, based on a story we once read on The Onion website, before we knew every article there is 100% satire.

The Story

The article tells the story of an ordinary man, a wife, a normal job, a regular life. The story begins with a small itch while going to the supermarket: an urge to try the higher-priced mustard. "It's just mustard, how much difference could a $2 upgrade make?"

So the guy bought the new mustard. And my oh my, he liked it. He liked it so much that he actually finished the entire jar. It took a few months, of course, no one eats that much mustard. But it lit a fire inside him he didn't know was there.
He bought four different kinds of mustard, making sure his wife used the right condiment when making his sandwiches. Some days there was yelling, over the misuse of Dijon in the wrong salad, but life goes on, and every marriage has its ups and downs.

Supermarket mustard eventually lost its charm, so he decided to look online for the best mustard a man could buy. He found a small forum, let's call it MustardFans.com, and posted a simple question: "What is the best mustard I can buy?" He posted and left for work. When he came back, four replies were waiting.
"That depends, are you more of a Dijon or smooth mustard guy? There are too many origins of the mustard seed to choose just one, am I right?" Another commenter wrote: "Well, buying mustard is nice, but ever since I started making my own, that's the only thing for me." The other two just laughed at his ignorance of the forum's sacred art. "Read the sticky," they told him.

And so our guy read the sticky. He started ordering exotic mustard's made by people on the internet, and made sure to review them all. His forum presence grew, with comparisons, mustard news, and consumption tips. He made sure to have enough variety so that every day he could taste a different origin, then come home and report back to the forum.

Not long after his first forum meetup in NYC, comparing recipes and techniques, he decided it was time to make his own condiment. He ordered seeds, jars, and whatever else you need to make the perfect mustard. His fridge had too many jars for food to share space. And when his wife dared say something about the obsession, he would flip. She didn't understand a thing about mustard.

Then he left his job and started selling his mustard online, certain the world would recognize the genius behind the best mustard they'd ever taste. This was the tipping point for his wife, who soon became his ex-wife. The time he raised his voice at her for interrupting the fermentation of his European-breed mustard. The day he missed her medical exam because someone on the forum "preferred the wrong kind of seed on their bologna" and had to be corrected.

This is the mustard man. He dug deep into a small hobby, making him appear crazy to the outside world, but among his people on MustardFans.com, he was a friend and a peer.

The Definition

To mustard something - a hobby, an idea, a passing interest, is the act of deep-diving into the most extreme corners of Reddit, niche forums, and obsessive communities, following a spark of interest all the way to the obsession.

This is a theme I keep encountering in my own life. I've done it with coffee. I now own a manual espresso machine (the Cafelat Robot) paired with a Niche Zero grinder. It happened with shaving too: what started in the army as a desperate search for a solution to irritated skin and ingrown hairs eventually led me to a double-edge stainless steel safety razor handmade by an artisan in France, and a shelf with over ten different shaving soaps.

We are the sum of our hobbies. And if being a mustard man were a death sentence, then kill me, because a life without mustard is an empty one.
For more on that, read the sticky.