Work vs Hobby#

Last week I saw on hacker news an article about how work life balance is a myth and how it slows down career growth. I didn’t read the entire article because the title already put me off, but I was interested to see the comment sections, and to my surprise most of them resonated with me. I prefer to have clear boundaries between my work and my life.

This article left me thinking for a few days. I started a career in tech because it is something I like, and it’s something I had as a hobby before, but having a big overlap between hobby and work is a gray area mentally. On one hand, it’s easier to work with something you like a lot, on the other you lose interest very quickly once work starts being a pain.

What I do is different on my job and when I’m having fun but fundamentally it’s the same, there’s no clear boundary. Not that I don’t enjoy having my own tech things, but mentally this takes a toll when I see code all the time, including in my leisure hours.

That’s why for the past month or so I started looking into new hobbies. I’m not giving up on doing tech stuff outside my job, but I want to do it for fun and not because I have to. And that’s when I found out there’s something weird going on with hobbies:

What is going on with hobbies?#

I Love music, which is why I recommend a song on every post, so maybe I could find something related to pick up as a hobby. I started picking up interest in DJ-ing. Watched a few tutorials, took a note on the price of controllers, downloaded Mixxx and gave it a try.

It was pretty cool at first, but not soon after the YouTube recommendations caught up to my new interest and started recommending videos such as “become a pro DJ in no time” or like “10 tricks which will put you in the top 10%”. I understand that DJ-ing is also a profession, but not even a week after starting to engage on it I’m being flooded with the idea of becoming pro and that I should turn it into a side job.

The same goes for guitars. I can’t search for a simple tutorial without being exposed to dozens of “get good fast” videos. Guitars in particular also have this interesting side effect where some people will spend more time deciding on purchases and buying new equipment rather than playing.

It’s funny how I noticed this behavior on some guitar players, while I suffer this myself with tech gadgets, and I’ll stop soon

I can’t help but feel that no matter what I pick up as my next hobby, I should optimize it for maximum efficiency, preferably learning very fast and monetizing as soon as possible. It’s like there’s no space anymore for having fun during the journey, it’s only about the end goal.

Even for a simple hobby as writing you see people trying to optimize for SEO and ad revenue while using LLMs to generate content. I don’t use LLMs for generating text on my blog, why would I? My goal is to write and communicate my ideas, not to become famous or make money out of it. I write because I want to, not because it’s profitable.

Gaming#

Quick tangent about games: I always considered myself a gamer, so I don’t usually think about the upfront cost gaming has. If you want to start gaming from zero, you have to buy either a console or a computer plus some games which you might like or not.

And ever since the battle passes were introduced, games stopped being a hobby to become your secondary job. There are deadlines, there are tasks to be completed, and sometimes even if you’re not having fun you keep on pushing through, except you’re the one paying.

The more time passes, the less energy I have to keep up with what’s going on. That’s part of the reason I have interest in retro games. My playing style has changed, I’ve lowered the amount of competitive games I play and now I tend to focus more on single player experiences. It’s not that I hate multiplayer games, but I want to be able to play a game the same way I would enjoy watching a movie, and not have to do homework every week to avoid losing money (that I didn’t have to spend anyway)

Do what you want#

I watched two YouTube videos1, 2 about this same topic last week which inspired me to write this post. I received a wake up call that hobbies can be just that: hobbies. There’s no need to go pro, there’s no need to be good at it, and there’s no need to do it fast: part of the enjoyment is in the journey. There’s no need to explain why you want to do it other than wanting to have fun. There’s no need to expect a return on investment.

We can do hobbies for the sake of doing them and have fun, so go do what you want

Thank you for reading, and as always, here’s a song: