Hustle Culture and the Creator Economy - Lay Your Hobbies to Rest

-- By KarsynArchambeau - 27 Apr 2022

My least favorite question is “what do you like to do in your free time?” It doesn’t matter what context in which the question is asked, I always hate being on the receiving end. My first thought is usually to respond “what free time,” but really, I have some. It’s not a lot, but it’s there. So what do I do with the moments I don’t have dedicated to class, or reading, or outlining? Usually, I dedicate them to having fact-to-face interactions with my friends and calling my family. I don’t think you can count that as a hobby though, just a healthy work-life balance. And the moments I don’t have scheduled? Those are pretty much guaranteed to be filled by nothing all that important. Odds are I am on my phone or watching a show. So my inevitable answer to that dreaded question is: I don’t really have any.

Prioritization

I used to have hobbies. In high school I loved spending hours with pencils and paper, drawing my favorite artists or random faces that popped into my head. If I wasn’t drawing, I was reading. It was commonplace for me to read a new book every week, escaping into the worlds created by the authors. But eventually, I convinced myself that those things were not productive uses of time. I convinced myself that my college schedule didn’t allow me to spend time being unproductive because to do so would be to waste time. And by the time I got to law school, I was so used to spending my time being productive or social that any time not committed to one of those two ends was time I just wanted to be still. The best part of the hobbies I had was that they kept my mind engaged, and I had tired myself to the point where that was just too much. At some point, I stopped picking up books of my own free will and forgot where I stored my art supplies. To put it simply, I didn’t prioritize my hobbies. So much of my life had been dedicated to moving that when I had a chance to be still, I took full advantage. And that hasn’t stopped. Even now, in law school, I spend so much of my day engaging my mind in an intensely difficult way. I had no idea thinking was so draining, but when I come home I cannot bring myself to do anything that feels productive.

Burnout

I had the chance to catch up with an old friend, an artist, a few weeks ago. In college, she turned her hobby into a business and began selling pieces on commission. When we caught up, I asked her if she was still drawing. There was no doubt in my mind, when I asked the question, that she was still doing something that she loved. But she said no. I expressed my shock, and she told me that drawing, creating art, didn’t bring her the same joy it used to. It had changed. “Burnout?” I asked. A sad nod, “burnout.” I told her I had put my pencils down as well, earning some surprise on her end. I told her I had stopped drawing when I got too busy for it, and no longer knew if I even had the talent. She nodded, knowing exactly what I meant. She said she was sure it would come back, but I don’t know if either of us believed her. But my friend’s burnout was different from mine. Hers didn’t stem from poor prioritization like mine did. Hers came from the monetization of something she loved, which turned it into a job instead of a hobby. So instead of feeling rejuvenated by the art she wanted to create, she felt the burden of demand dictating what she had to make. And my friend isn’t alone. With the prevalence of social media and its low barriers to entry, anyone can go viral for anything. Many times, the person going viral is showcasing a particular talent (singing, painting, drawing, knitting, you name it), and the comments inevitably reflect one of two common refrains: “where can I buy this,” or, “you should sell this.” I can’t, and don’t, fault creators that follow those refrains and sell their content. I don’t fault the people commenting either. It has become increasingly popular to monetize hobbies as a side hustle for extra income. I fault hustle culture and a society driven by earning potential.

Result

Though the sources of our burnout differed, the reason for my friend and I’s mutual loss of our hobbies stemmed from the same central idea: if it’s not making money or something to put on your resume, then it is time better spent doing something else. For me, anything that wasn’t going on my resume or related to work was unproductive, and the only time I wanted to be unproductive was when I shut my brain off. My hobbies simply didn’t fit into that structure. For my friend, she was convinced that because her skill was marketable, she was obligated to market it, or she might as well not do it. At the end of the day, our hobbies no longer represented the leisure we loved them for.

To be fair, not all monetization of hobbies is a bad thing. For some, it’s an opportunity to exist in the intersection between what you love and how you make money. But it’s sad, to me, that often our first instinct when someone has a marketable skill that comes in the form of a hobby is to tell them they could make money off of it. And it’s sad that a creator might fall into the monetization of their passion for good reasons and end up not loving it anyway. Eventually, doing something purely for the sake of loving it starts to become a luxury and a privilege.

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