The COMODIFICATION of HOBBIES

How we've ended up in a place where no one is allowed to be mediocre at anything.

The other day I was sitting at breakfast with my significant other and we were talking about goals we were looking to achieve as she expressed interest in picking up a new hobby. We got into a discussion which a few might be familiar with, where you hype each other up and offer ways to go about it, we both get excited and start thinking of interesting routes to take this newfound passion in. I could not hold this excitement and suggested she start a business with her new hobby. She immediately rejected the idea and said she did not mind starting a venture she was not entirely good at purely for the joy of learning and improving.

What she said, I must admit, came to me as a bit of a shock. America's entrepreneurial spirit has often been valued as a pillar of its capitalist culture. Why would anyone purposely fill their time taking on a project that doesn't promise monetary returns? Therein lies the problem, I realized. The question ought to be “why would anyone take on a hobby solely to turn a profit?”

Often, it seems, mediocrity is not rewarded and even looked down upon, even the word itself has a bad connotation. It seems as if unless one is excellent at something it is not worth taking the time to pursue it, and if one is bad at it then they may as well give up and pursue something else entirely. The value is not placed on the progress, journey, or experience anymore but rather on the polished, perfect, final product.

It is in that drive for excellence that we often forget what motivates us to keep doing meaningful work. Many feel only validated by the monetary value attached to a certain venture or thing but rarely praised for the emotional impact of our work. Inversely, impactful work is rarely recognized and credited if it did not return a good sum of money, hence why the salaries of a nurse and a banker differ widely and it is not the latter that takes the smaller cut home.

I have come to realize that the last time many of us felt free to fail at anything was when we were very young and starting out a new sport or hobby. We reward children for drawing doodles and nonsensical figures because we know that mastery comes after a long time practicing, we push young kids to practice sports because it is in that practice that we learn to be good team mates and the value of perseverance . Why then don’t we value our friends and acquaintances taking up hobbies simply to enjoy the small amount of time they have outside of work.

I am humbled to say that this realization might have been the driving factor pushing me to want to start writing this blog. I hope to learn as I go along, but am certainly not under any illusion. I wish you too can find satisfaction taking on a project or hobby you might know very little about, I know I struggle to do that sometime, it’s hard to be bad at things, but the hard things are the ones that shape who we are.

To my partner in crime whose excellence and drive inspires me every day, thank you.