I cannot tell you how many new interests and hobbies I have picked up throughout my life only to give them up and never look back once I discovered that I wasn’t, somehow, an immediate expert at them. I ignored all of the old wisdom about learning from one’s mistakes, about practice making perfect, and simply convinced myself that if my first attempt was no good, the second or third one wouldn’t be, either. Looking at my peers, it appears I am far from alone in this; many young twenty-somethings looking for their passion, their raison d’être, eagerly pick up hobbies galore—but unlike our parents and grandparents who more often than not picked up knitting or gardening simply to pass time, we are not satisfied with having a hobby merely for the sake of enjoying it, no—when we pick up a hobby, we have to be good at it.
Perhaps it is a symptom of our modern society: firstly, there is the distinctly capitalist idea that anything we do, in our free time or otherwise, must have value. If you enjoy painting in your spare time, you ought to try selling your art as prints; if you’re particularly adept at creative writing, you should consider offering proofreading services as a side-hustle. It increasingly seems as though we cannot imagine guiltlessly immersing ourselves in something we enjoy without the potential for some kind of profit, be this financial or the satisfaction that comes from sharing the fruits of one’s labor on social media.
Social media is likewise something that has become an ever-growing factor in our motives for doing what we do, and not merely that—the connectivity offered by online spaces means that we see not only that which is uploaded by friends, but by anyone across the globe. Unlike previous generations, we are every single day fed with content produced by people who are not just good at what they do, but excel at it; musical prodigies, artistic geniuses, people who seem to spend every waking hour knitting, crafting, creating. Social media has co-opted our hobbies, turning them from simple pastimes into performances—more often than not, the driving force behind our spare time endeavours is less enjoyment and more “look what I can do”. For many, like myself, it drains the joy out of creating simply for the sake of it, and makes it ever more daunting to be anything less than perfect at what one does.
If this sounds at all familiar, as I am sure it does to many readers, I want to offer a different perspective in the spirit of self-care and self-acceptance—dare to be bad at something. Better still, dare to be absolutely horrible at something. Sing out of tune, knit a scarf without any regard for kinks and dropped stitches, plant a herb garden on your window-sill even if you’re absolutely sure all your plants will die; relish not in the final product but in the innately human joy that is creating—channel the excitement of a four-year-old drawing with crayons, and put your art on the fridge even if you feel like it’s the ugliest thing you’ve ever made. Reclaim your hobbies; what you’re doing and the time you spend doing it is yours, not anyone else’s. So go ahead and pour your heart into something you absolutely suck at—it might just be the best thing you’ll ever do.