I feel like we've forgotten how to have hobbies.
Or maybe we've just forgotten that a hobby is allowed to be completely useless.
There used to be a pretty clear difference between something you enjoyed doing and something you were trying to make money doing. You could take photographs without becoming a photographer, or you could play guitar without starting a band, or you could make things without opening an Etsy shop.
Now it seems like everything comes with a business plan. Photography? Sell prints. DJing? Build a brand. Woodworking? Start an Etsy store. Making shirts? Congratulations, you own a clothing company now. Making videos? Start a YouTube channel. Writing? You need a newsletter! Even the things we do to relax somehow seem to come with the expectation that they should eventually become a thing. And I'm absolutely guilty of this.
I've spent most of my life collecting interests. Photography, video, computers, music, DJing, graphic design, woodworking, making websites, recording podcasts, and lately, apparently, printing T-shirts. I've never really been very good at just picking one thing and sticking with it. For a long time I thought that was a problem I needed to solve. Maybe I'm starting to wonder if it isn't.
Photography is probably the best example. I've been taking pictures for most of my adult life. At some point, something I enjoyed doing became a business. Then it became work. And that's when something strange happened. When it was a hobby, I could take a picture because I liked the way the light looked. I could spend an afternoon wandering around with a camera and come home with a bunch of pictures that didn't really need to accomplish anything. But once it became work, every picture had a purpose. There was a client, a deadline, an invoice, expectations and somebody waiting for the finished product. Eventually, something that had started because I loved doing it became something I sometimes couldn't wait to get away from.
I don't think that's necessarily a reason not to turn a hobby into a career. There are plenty of people who manage to do exactly that and genuinely love it. I've certainly made money from things I've enjoyed doing, and there's nothing inherently wrong with that.
The part that bothers me is the idea that everything we enjoy is supposed to somehow become a way to make money.
We're surrounded by this idea that every interest is supposed to become an opportunity. Every skill is supposed to become a side hustle. Every creative activity needs an audience, a product, a brand, a Patreon, a YouTube channel, an Etsy store or some other way to turn it into income.
And I understand why. Life is expensive. Extra income is useful. If you're good at something and somebody is willing to pay you for it, why wouldn't you? But sometimes I wonder what we're losing when we start looking at everything through that lens.
I've done it myself over and over again. I'll get interested in something and almost immediately start thinking about what I could do with it. Could I sell it? Could I turn it into a business? Could I build a website around it? Could it become another source of income?
I recently bought a heat press and started figuring out how to make T-shirts, so apparently I now own a T-shirt company. I've been building 417EDM and all the projects that have grown out of that. I started another podcast. I've spent years taking photographs and more recently thinking about how to preserve and organize some of that history. I apparently cannot leave well enough alone.
Give me an interesting idea and my brain immediately starts asking, "Could this be a business?" That's probably useful sometimes. It's also exhausting.
There's something incredibly satisfying about making something that doesn't need to go anywhere. You can build something in your garage that nobody is ever going to buy. You can take a photograph that only you ever see. You can learn how something works just because you were curious. You can spend three hours figuring out how to do something that has absolutely no practical application beyond the fact that you wanted to know how to do it. There doesn't have to be a next step. It doesn't have to scale. It doesn't have to generate engagement. It doesn't have to become a brand. It doesn't even have to be all that good. Maybe that's part of the point of a hobby.
I think there's also something that happens as you get older. You start feeling like your interests are supposed to fit together somehow. You're supposed to figure out what you really want to do with your life and then focus on that one thing.I've spent a lot of time wondering whether I should be doing photography, or computers, or music, or business, or something else entirely. Maybe that's the wrong question. Maybe I'm just somebody who likes making various things.
Sometimes I make photographs. Sometimes I make music-related projects. Sometimes I make websites. Sometimes I make shirts. Sometimes I write. Sometimes I take something apart just to see how it works. I don't know that all of those things need to become one coherent career. Maybe it's okay to just be interested in things. And maybe we should be a little more comfortable with doing something simply because we like doing it.
I don't think there's anything wrong with turning a hobby into a business. Hell, I'm still trying to do it myself. I just think there's something worth protecting in the things that don't make you any money. Maybe not everything needs a business model.
Maybe sometimes it's enough to make something because you wanted to see if you could. Maybe it's enough to take a picture because the light looked good. Or to play a record because you like the way it sounds. Or to build something in your garage that nobody is ever going to buy.
Maybe a hobby doesn't have to become anything at all.
Which is probably a pretty ironic thing to write on a blockchain where somebody might actually pay me for writing it.