I have been thinking a lot about what it means to have a hobby in a capitalist society. How do you fuel that hobby? Do you have limits for how much money and time you spend? Are we even allowed to spend money on a hobby? Not a side hustle, not a thing that brings money in, but something that requires that you spend money and time on it in a way that isn’t financially rewarding. How are we navigating that in the year 2021? 

Recently I have been indulging my hobbies in a big way. I am spending my evenings reading and not putting in that extra hour at work after 7pm. I am posting all my books on instagram and engaging with other readers on the platform. And most recently, I have started a YouTube channel and I am giving my Saturdays to filming and editing. I have chosen a hobby in books and I am giving it all my time and some of my money and it feels strange. 

I think for some of us the idea of the “hobby” is something new. Don’t get me wrong, I have always known about hobbies. I have listened to people talk about how they really love learning about nautical knots. I have watched videos of people gush about their latest outdoor adventure. And I have read about people who collect stamps, coins and even feathers. So I am aware of the concept of having a hobby.

Over the past few years I have allowed myself to dip my toe and indulge in my hobbies so long as it didn’t take any money and time from me. I started this blog but maintained that I didn’t want to spend money on it and that I would only write if I HAD the time (whatever that means). I have read books but on the condition that they cost me very little and that most of them should be books geared towards finance that would teach me something new that I can apply to my daily work. I even went as far as limiting myself to only reading non-fiction at some point, figuring that if I was going to spend my time on reading without compensation then I should be learning something new about topics that I rarely ever cared about. 

The notion of doing something away from my work that didn’t bring me any additional income seemed irrational to me.  It made me feel as though I was wasting the most precious commodity to me; which is time. 

I didn’t consider joy. I didn’t consider fulfilment. And I certainly didn’t consider whether or not this was making me a better person in the long run. All I cared about for a long time was that my time was spent “productively”, whilst never stopping to question what productivity was for me. 

Now I realise the great place of privilege I am in to even be able to think about the concepts of hobby versus capitalism. I think there are very few people in this world who can choose how they spent their “free” time (the concept of “free time” in itself is outrageous) and there is an immense level of unfairness in that alone. I do however think that it is a topic worth discussing and thinking about, and I wanted to offer my contribution to that discussion here. 

Capitalism has brought about so many convoluted understandings of what it means to be productive. I, of course, have only been alive during this century but I would hope that there was a point in time when humans did not decide their value in the world based on how much we get done in a day. Unfortunately any study of history dashes any of these hopes as it it becomes clear to everyone that capitalism has always been the great decider.  

When we decide to indulge in our hobbies the first thing that we have to consult is capitalism, capitalism has to give us permission. Capitalism has to dictate how much time, how much money and how much effort we put into that hobby.  Capitalism has to tell us that it’s okay to produce something other than that which will yield an income, capitalism has to tell us that we can breathe and that we can take a break from always serving the system. 

I think one of the greatest leaps that we as humans can take is deciding to take reigns of our productivity away from capitalism by not allowing it to tell us what we produce, how we produce and how much of we must produce. I am new to the world of hobby and I am still very much working fifty hours of the week and it would be completely disingenuous of me to pretend that I don’t enjoy 80% of my job. I don’t want to sit here and pretend that I don’t get an immense sense of purpose when I solve a complicated problem or when I reach a deadline that capitalism has set for me. What I do want to do, and urge that you try and do, is to stop often and ask yourself how much of how you move through this world is dictated by capitalism. 

If your goal is to make sure that every moment of your waking time is spent maximising the amount of money you make – that should be your choice and you should go forth and rock the world with your focus and ability to stay on course. 

If your goal is to indulge in some side work that brings you both joy and income – then by all means, go on with yourself self-aware self and conquer. 

But if your goal is to carve out time where you serve the capitalist machine and some time where you feed the hobby machine without limits and expectations – then there is a place for you to exist in this spectrum of the world. 

There’s enough room under the moon for us to all feel good about how we spent our hours and why we spend our hours. I am currently on a mission to find a happy little medium, I hope you find yours too.  

Thank you for reading and please remember to be kinder than you think is necessary. 

See you in the next one.