The Death of the Hobby

I used to love painting just because it felt good to move a brush around a canvas. I was not particularly good at it, but that was the point. It was a hobby. But lately, I have noticed that we do not really have “hobbies” anymore. Everything has to be a “side hustle” or a “personal brand.” If you are good at photography, your friends tell you that you should be charging for headshots. If you like to bake, people ask why you don’t have an Etsy shop or a TikTok dedicated to your recipes. We have been conditioned to believe that any talent we have is wasted if it is not being monetized.

This pressure to turn our creative outlets into profit-making ventures is killing the actual joy of creativity. When you start thinking about your hobby in terms of “likes,” “engagement,” or “hourly rates,” it stops being a way to decompress and starts being another job. We are already stressed enough with classes and internships. We do not need the added pressure of being a “content creator” for our own relaxation.

There is something deeply radical about being “bad” at something and doing it anyway. We need to reclaim the right to have interests that serve absolutely no professional purpose. You should be allowed to play an instrument poorly, write poetry that will never be published, or play a video game without trying to become a pro streamer. Not everything we do has to be a contribution to our resume. Sometimes the most productive thing you can do for your mental health is to spend an afternoon doing something that is completely and utterly useless to the market.