The Death of Hobbies: Why I Am Sick of Monetizing Every Ounce of My Joy
I don't know exactly when it happened, but at some point over the last five years, it became socially unacceptable to just do something strictly for fun. We have created a society so deeply obsessed with productivity and the "grind" that the very concept of a hobby has practically been erased from existence.
Today, if you knit a halfway decent sweater, someone immediately tells you to open an Etsy shop. If you take a nice photo of a sunset, you are told to start a photography page and sell prints. If you enjoy playing video games, you are asked why you aren't streaming on Twitch.
I am completely exhausted by it. I am tired of this toxic hustle culture that insists every single waking second of our lives must be optimized, packaged, and sold for profit.
The Side-Hustle Epidemic
I want to clarify that I understand that many people are struggling financially these days. I understand why people want to earn additional money, but there is an important difference between needing to get an extra job to make ends meet and the misguided belief that one’s passion should be monetized.
When you start making money from a hobby, you rob it of the special charm and fascination it used to have. Your hobby stops being a good way to rest and turns into a series of tasks that need to be completed. You don’t paint for the sake of relieving stress anymore, you paint to meet the algorithm’s demands. You don’t write for the sake of self-expression anymore; you write to meet the word limit required by the search engine optimization rules.
The Performance of Living
It isn't just about money, either. It is about the performance. We can no longer just experience a quiet, peaceful moment without feeling the desperate urge to document it for an audience.
When you make a loaf of sourdough bread, it's impossible to just enjoy it with butter quietly. Instead, you need to bring out the ring lights, shoot a slow-motion video of you slicing the loaf, edit it to match some trending audio, and share it online to demonstrate your successful weekend. The mental toll of serving as a PR manager for our own lives is becoming overwhelming.
When did we become so terrified of just existing quietly?
The Absolute Right to be Terrible
I want to reclaim the right to be absolutely terrible at things. I want to paint a landscape that looks like a muddy, chaotic disaster, laugh at it, and throw it in the trash without worrying about my engagement rate. I want to play a guitar terribly just because the vibration of the strings feels good.
We need to aggressively protect our peace. We need to build walls around the things we love and refuse to let the market inside.
If you are reading this and feeling that same heavy, constant pressure to turn your weekend into a business, let this be your permission slip to stop. You do not owe the internet your hobbies. Your worth as a human being is not calculated by your output, your side hustles, or your engagement metrics.
Go do something completely useless today. Do it badly. Do it privately. And most importantly, do not tell a single soul on the internet about it.