#16 Just for fun
Not all hobbies have to turn into side hustles. Not all hobbies have to be competitive.
Where I live, it costs £7 to go for a swim at the local pool. For roughly the same amount of money, I could buy a pint of beer.
Depending on the kind of week I’ve had, that pint can sometimes feel like the better deal. It’s immediate. It’s magical.
The swim, by comparison, asks a little bit more from me upfront. I have to change, shower and contend with my own breathing. But I suppose it does probably win on long-term benefits. It helps cardiovascular health; it strengthens joints; I usually stop at one swim at a time.
Recently, I went for the swim – naturally, without my phone, without any music, without a YouTube video playing in the background. I was alone with my thoughts. My performance in the pool was hardly that of Michael Phelps, but it didn’t need to be. Instead, I just bobbed along, calmly and uncompetitively.
Beyond the initial sting of £7 – consider that it used to be £5 just a couple of years ago – I wasn’t worried about money. I wasn’t worried about work. I wasn’t worried about whether the car was going to make that sound again. I certainly wasn’t worried about going faster. I was just being – which I’d argue is a seriously underrated activity.
Modern life has developed a bad habit lately of turning hobbies into contests, projects or performance art. People don’t just cook anymore. They watch five videos on how to chop an onion the “right” way. They buy expensive knives; they agonise over exact temperatures and timings as if their lives depend on it. It’s pasta for God’s sake, not an episode of Squid Game.
Even reading has now become something with annual targets and apps to track it. Running, which is meant to be the most accessible exercise, comes with league tables, split times and other performance data, which, if looked at too closely or taken too seriously, risks undermining the best part of getting out on the road in the first place: to clear your head.
I’m not saying that setting goals is bad. Of course, there’s a pleasure in seeing progress laid out in neat little charts. But if you’re not careful, then a lot of hobbies can start to feel like they need justification. As if the only valid version of doing something is the one where you get better at it, or extract something from it, or turn it into something that pays. But sometimes, a hobby can just be a hobby.
I think there’s a lot to be said for being average at something. Or, more generously, about being good enough at something that you enjoy it, without ever needing to be the best at it. You don’t have to become an expert photographer to enjoy taking photographs. You don’t need to sell handmade scarves on Etsy to justify learning how to knit. You don’t need to perform in public just because you’ve started learning the bagpipes. In fact, it’s better if you don’t. Hobbies don’t have to graduate into side hustles or main hustles for them to count.
Obviously, money matters. Modern life is expensive, and perhaps for some people the idea of turning an interest into a payday isn’t vanity, it’s practicality. But there’s a difference between that and the assumption that everything enjoyable must eventually become monetised, optimised, or measured in some way. Because once that happens, you’re not really protecting your hobby anymore, you’re just moving it into the same system of numbers and outcomes that you were trying to escape in the first place.
There’s still value in doing things simply because you want to do them, because they make you feel a bit lighter.
Not every hobby has to be productive, by the way. Watching TV or playing video games are still hobbies. You’re allowed to spend an evening binge-watching Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, Love Island or the films of François Truffaut, without writing a review. You shouldn’t feel guilty about playing Pokémon or Football Manager – because they’re awesome.
There’s nothing wrong with colouring in or collecting stamps. Feel free to birdwatch or spot trains. Maybe even take up taxidermy, I don’t know.
Hard work and ambition are both incredibly important things. But so is rest. And you’ve got to be careful not to distort your perception of taking a break.
Look, by all means, keep some goals. Train for a marathon if you want to. Get hench. Aim to read two books a month. Pursue ambitious things. But also give yourself permission to plod, play or even fail if you need to. Keep one corner of your life free from the pressure to achieve. It’ll probably help you succeed elsewhere. Remember to do stuff you like doing. You’re going to be fine.