Finding the balance between the enjoyment of the hobby and your other long term goals is definitely worth taking the time to think about.
It wasn’t keebs I took a break from, but another hobby I enjoyed when I had some other important tasks to do, PC building. I didn’t build those as often as I build keebs now, but I was always tinkering with one or another. I took a break for a good few years and did miss a lot of neat developments - but when I jumped back in my mind was blown how far things had come and how much easier the build experience had gotten. No more fluorescent tubes. No more cases full of nothing but 80mm fans that sound like the Concorde. No more master and slave jumper shenanigans. And video cards! When I took a break, I think the biggest baddest card on the market had 512 mb of vram, and when I got back in cards with six times that at a lower price were commonplace.
While the keeb space does change quickly and always seems to have something new and interesting, it’s not like (most) of those things are going anywhere. If you take a break from the more expensive parts of the hobby (acquiring new chassis, etc), there are still plenty of things to keep you engaged while you give most of your time to short term tasks that feed-into long term goals. I basically totally ignored the PC universe for a few years, but you don’t necessarily have to do it that way, especially with keebs.
I think it’s worth developing a personal heuristic for handling things on a case-by-case basis. How much time will x take? In context of the time I directly have to work with and what may compete for use of that time, is it worth it?
I’ll say this; I think any time you’re faced with the decision of keebs or academics, go academics every time. There will come a point at which you’re finished with the academic stuff (at least in terms of the stuff society puts weight on, you can always continue learning on your own), and keebs will still be there. It’s true, you may have missed-out on getting this or that innovative or interesting whatnot, but chances are there will be something new that iterates on them later.
Yes, you may have missed the window to get the Lamborghini Reventón of keebs while studying, but later this year there will be a whole fleet of Aventadors that improve all the good parts of the design at a better price and at wider availability, ready to go.
Think of it as a sprint; it’s worth putting your energy in the right place for it, and you’ll benefit more over time from that choice in the short term and be more able to enjoy keebs in whatever way you might want down the road.
There are a lot of different aspects of the keeb hobby to draw enjoyment from, and the trading and selling aspect is fun for lots of folks. If you have to take a break from that for a little while to get some other things done, I think it’s a compromise worth making - and in the mean-time you can still enjoy keeb-related content and help other folks discover the fun and/or enjoyment of a good keyboard.