When did having a hobby require turning fun into an enterprise? In the world of Etsy, eBay, and Amazon, no activity has value unless its product has a price. It sets a high standard and a heavy burden. That burden invites overwhelm and stress that shouldn’t be there. A hobby traditionally is supposed to be all about fun not significant financial gain. Here are three reasons not to turn your hobby into a side hustle.
Whatever your hobby is, above all it is a pastime that you enjoy and can return to. You can do it when you want and how you want after the what (hobby choice) and the why (just because it is fun for you) are taken care of. It suits you and brings you joy and that is enough. There might be some effort, but it’s negligible and you choose to do it willingly. From preparation to starting, through centering action and final clean up, this is how you choose to spend your free time. Be it baking, video games, art, crafting, dance, photography, fitness, knitting, reading, writing, gardening, travel, or making music: it’s for you. It’s a way to express yourself without explanation. Its value is unmeasurable and often exceeds expectations…when it is a hobby. It doesn’t matter what you call it: “just a hobby”, “my hobby”, or give it a certain amount of reverence without a name, “something I like to do in my free time”.
Not only is it for you, but it’s also about you, too. So, some folks, to be encouraging since you are so good at your hobby and its products, would say you should turn the cupcakes you bake, for example, on special occasions for friends and family, into a business. This is where fun exits and the disappointment of duty enters the situation. What you were doing had a high level of enjoyment and no demands. That’s changed because what was voluntary has mushroomed into a cloud of duties, where none of these duties bring you any closer to more enjoyment or an increase in the amount of fun you had pre-monetization. Duty’s focus is on the hobby becoming an action whose work product is for sale everywhere. But its chief loss is that there’s no longer the same peace to be found anywhere after pivoting to rebrand your hobby and taking it from the personal space into the professional one.
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You may have ignored that inner voice and feeling that you should not turn your hobby, something that you love doing, into a source of reliable profit. Then realization strikes. Maybe not in one month or six weeks, but by ninety days in, you are doing what you love(d) but the money has not followed like the folks who encouraged you to monetize said it would. Now you are left to deal with the headaches that surround a start-up. As the (now) business’s entrepreneur, you are compelled to spend more money in hopes of netting a greater financial reward than your amount of economic outlay without return. You pour good money after bad trying to make a go of it, never mind the fact that you don’t see any significant amount of money coming in. Its costs outweigh the simple pleasure you had when it was a pure hobby.
Some folks can make it work and with some sacrifices can yield enough of a profit making it possible for them to leave their 9 to 5 for their side hustle. These are the folks you hear about. What you don’t hear about are all those who failed, went into debt trying to make it work, or abandoned their hobby altogether.
Regrettably, you now think of your hobby in terms of profit and loss not fun and relaxation. You are losing your hobby that was once your passion. There is no price you can put on that. Nor can you put a price on the way it preserved your calm and helped maintain your mental health against the daily grind known as work. How do you decide that having a hobby-for-hire has not earned its keep when it comes to a dollars and cents inventory? Is the bottom line that it must be let go?
The first, main reason for the hobby was to have fun and relax apart from what you do for a living. It didn’t require justification. It didn’t require a business plan. It didn’t feel like a job. It did take you on a circular journey from hobby as a hobby, to hobby as a business or job, and back, hopefully, to hobby as a source of fun. This is why you had a hobby in the first place, girl, to have fun! Your hobby was not intended to be a lucrative side hustle or part-time gig that could sustain you. There are other more dependable, successful, outcome-oriented sources of freelance, part-time, or even on-call income. However, for most folks, one’s hobby is not that.
The peace and joy of a hobby strikes a delicate balance not to be disturbed or disrupted. After a hard day at work, you can turn to your hobby to relax. On the weekends or if you have some downtime, your hobby is faithfully waiting for you. It can be a means of creative self-expression found in the silent depths of your soul. You can spend as much or as little time as you desire. No serious goals or drive for capitalist competition. No profit and loss statements. No business plans.
Having that freedom is what makes a hobby special. You don’t have to answer to clients, customers, investors, or tax collectors; just do you and let it be what you want it to be. You may earn a few bucks here and there, or you may not. No rules. No judgment. But what awaits is the ultimate personal reward.
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