Why You Need a New Hobby

Every time we used to go shopping at Politics and Prose, a bookstore near my old apartment, I would tell Josh that I wanted to work there.  “It makes me happy,” I argued.  “Books make me happy and this space makes me happy.”  But he argued that I liked it precisely because it wasn’t my work space.  It was my relaxation space.  If I started working there, it would no longer be my relaxation space because I couldn’t exactly hang out and rest in my work space, even if it was off-hours.  I’d no longer be a customer.  It’s be an employee who happened to not officially be at work.

Touché.

Fast forward many years later, and I have made some of my hobbies into jobs.  I made it my goal to become a professional gamer several years ago, and while I haven’t actually been paid to play video games, I have been paid to create games.  And I got paid to write a book about creating games.  And I can now play games without a second of guilt because they’re part of my job.  So… there’s that.

I read two articles this week, both in the same place.  The first was about why hobbies make us happy.  When asked what she does, the author responds with career information.  But she realizes everyone else is answering with the stuff they do outside of work.  They surf, hike, play music.

Thus begins a dissection of the American obsession with defining ourselves through our work and the importance of also looping in your hobbies.

Americans, so the cultural-industrial myth goes, are doers. But is that all we are? Not if we want to be healthy, according to Patricia W. Linville … Linville has studied the idea of “self-complexity” — or how a human sorts the many traits, roles, and other identity markers that make up him- or herself. She has found that the narrower a person’s vision of their “self” is, the more prone they are to depression and anxiety.

On the other side was an article about why we should keep our hobbies as hobbies and not try to turn them into a side hustle or our career.  (Uh… too late for me?)

At a time when Etsy shops and craft fairs and food trucks are decidedly mainstream, every domestic hobby is at risk of becoming a side hustle. I don’t want to boil and slice eggs for money. Messing around with a stand mixer or a sewing machine is fun for me because it’s not work. Personal pleasure is what makes a hobby a hobby.

There isn’t really an argument about why you shouldn’t except that people report losing joy in their hobby once it becomes work.  But I’ve found the opposite — it made me feel like I could really enjoy my hobby vs feel like I had to apologize for the time I dedicated to my hobby.  I have zero guilt about playing games because it helps me do my job better.

What are your hobbies?  And would you ever want to make your hobby your job?