Hobbies for Hobbies’ Sake
“Things I once enjoyed (ah-ah)
Just keep me employed now
Things I'm longing for
Some day, I'll be bored of
It's so weird
That we care so much until we don't”
~Getting Older, Billie Eilish
These lyrics from Billie Eilish’s sophomore album paint a picture of the frustrating reality and catch-22 that may come with getting paid for your passions. Monetizing your passions can be a double-edged sword; on the one hand, who wouldn’t want to get paid to do what you love? Yet, on the other side of the coin lies the question – how long will you continue to truly enjoy your craft when it becomes hampered with deadlines and price tags attached to it? What if in the process of monetizing our passion, it becomes less authentic and more watered-down as it is tied into a neat little, more palatable, consumer-friendly box?
In our modern-day world, we are riddled with articles, apps, and information overloading our brains convincing us of the almighty importance of productivity and glorifying a never-ending grind; the focal point always boils down to how we can monetize ourselves, our passions, our time. However, there is true value in compartmentalizing our lives and keeping at least some of the things that make us feel more alive sacred and purely for pleasure, not work.
Most of us spend a lot of our energy strategizing and planning out gruesome details surrounding the work that we do to make a living. Keeping our passions (at least some of them) without a monetary end-goal grants us more fluidity and freedom. It allows us to remain free to enjoy creating and being in the moment without needing to know where it will take us in the future, or outlining the logistics of what we need to “gain” out of it. There’s no need to always validate everything we do or justify what we enjoy by tying it back to productivity and the mainstream ideas of success we are constantly fed. Creating or doing what we love just for the sake of doing and because it connects us deeper to ourselves is more than reason enough for why it is valuable; it does not need to be tied to dollar signs to be justified.
Putting a price-tag on these passions can be very limiting. When we are doing something that we enjoy purely for enjoyment’s sake, we are able to preserve a deeply personal tie to the activity. Once it is capitalized on, however, we tread a slippery slope in that it can be easy to tweak what we do to make more profit. Rather than staying true to ourselves or lettings things flow organically, at this point the underlying motivations can shift, making it easier to strip away the authenticity and make ourselves more palatable and profitable.
Perhaps the greatest potential cost of not preserving the sanctity of our hobbies and passions is the blow it can have to our mental health. We recently saw this play out before the world with the heat faced by Olympic gymnast Simone Biles when she withdrew from the final competition at the Tokyo Olympics to focus on her mental health. Just before withdrawing, she posted on her Instagram: “I truly do feel like I have the weight of the world on my shoulders at times. I know I brush it off and make it seem like pressure doesn’t affect me but damn sometimes it’s hard hahaha! The olympics is no joke!”
She faced so much backlash for making a personal decision to take a step back from what she loves and the pressures that have come with doing it before the world. Her courageous decision shows us that despite what may make sense to the world (all the accolades and money) as it pertains to our passions, when those passions no longer bring true enjoyment on their own accord and instead become suffocating or not healthy to our overall well-being, it is not only okay but truly a testament to our self-love to take a step back, reflect, and adjust accordingly.
Do you have any hobbies ? Let us know below
