Hobbies Have Been Commercialised

What happened to doing something for its own sake?

The typical hobby has a pretty predictable life cycle: initial interest, a few too many purchases, and practice that’s mixed with a faint promise that you’ll actually stick with it. Before you know it, it’s collecting dust next to the ukulele your uncle bought you three years ago.

Somewhere along the way, we decided hobbies had to define us. Hobbies are meant to take up space — in our time, our thoughts, even our personality. But in practice, they mostly take up a shelf and, honestly, I think that’s more than fine. It’s okay if something only happens once in a while, if it exists in brief bursts of enthusiasm, if you’re objectively bad at it. Not everything has to turn into a passion project.

Apparently, being mediocre is no longer a private affair. Hobbies have started to feel suspiciously more like side hustles. And sometimes I feel like a walking offence to that idea. I tend to stall somewhere between interest and mild frustration. I’ll download tabs, buy the supplies and maybe watch a tutorial or two, and then stop right before the part where I’m supposed to get worse before getting better. I’m not starting a manifesto for mediocrity, but it does feel weirdly hard to just be bad at things lately. Every new hobby turns into some kind of audition with proof of discipline, taste, or some hidden talent.

I don’t think this is just me. Everyone seems a little allergic to the idea of not mastering something. The internet turned effort into evidence, and if you’re doing something, there should be a result. And if there’s no result, what’s the point? We don’t shy away from leisure, so long as it’s productive.

When I was younger, I didn’t think twice about being mediocre at things, and hobbies didn’t require an audience. I did gymnastics despite being barely able to touch my toes, drew things no one could identify, and sang with enough confidence to potentially make up for the pitch. It was chaotic, but it was fun — and, crucially, it didn’t matter that I wasn’t good at any of these things.

It’s not that I’ve stopped wanting hobbies. I think I’ve just become too aware of how they look from the outside. Perhaps it’s because we came to uni and suddenly had less time to just be fun. At the same time, there’s this nagging, quiet pressure for everything to have a sort of direction or aesthetic value, even if no one’s watching.

What matters is the doing aspect; badly, quietly, without the faintest hint of strategy. I’m not pretending that’s profound. I just think it might be nice to do things we’re terrible at again: to try something new without turning it into a big project, just to see what happens when you do something for no reason except that you feel like it.

There’s obviously no grand solution here, and I’m by no means suggesting you rush out to collect five miscellaneous hobbies. But lately I’ve been trying to do things I can’t be good at, at least not anytime soon. And, contrary to the idea that you can’t enjoy something unless you’re good at it, there’s something oddly nice about doing things badly, with no pressure, no metrics, and no specific end goal. For me, this has been going to the driving range with my one little 7-iron, where I somehow manage to defy physics and send the ball behind me.

So this is an official “I miss you” text about hobbies that could mind their own business. The ones that lived in half-used notebooks or drawers, quietly terrible and none of anyone’s concern. With the reminder that not everything needs to become content, maybe we can start reclaiming casual creativity.

Illustration from Wikimedia Commons