Hobbies and profession, where to draw the line?
Everyone has a hobby. A little something to keep you going. Something that allows you to escape from the world or from yourself even. A hobby can be as important as you let it be. But once you give it enough importance and let yourself pursue it as a profession, it looses its essence. It no longer is a hobby. It becomes a compulsion, something that requires your full time commitment. I’ve seen people take up their hobbies professionally and eventually begin to stress out because they lack inspiration. Isn’t inspiration important when it comes to hobbies? Every hobby, more or less, needs some amount of inspiration. And it is highly impossible to stay motivated or inspired all the time
They say “ do what you love” , but doing it long enough might make you hate it as well. Maybe because you no longer have the curiosity. Maybe because of the monotony. And once it becomes your main source of income- it starts demanding more and more from you. So much more that it’s no longer what you used to enjoy doing. And before you know it, your hobby becomes the very thing it was supposed to save you from.
Imagine you come home from a hectic day of work, you take out a nice canvas to paint for a while and let out all of the stress. Now imagine your work is painting. What are you going to do to relax now? What used to bring relief, be it momentarily, is now stressing you out. You’ll find yourself lacking inspiration because before, you used to paint whenever you were inspired but now you have to paint to survive. This might not be true for everyone but it does happen with a lot of people. As long as you do not have the pressure to finish your work, it will work out just fine. But in this world, do we ever not have pressure?
I love art, literature, and photography, and with a passion too. But what if I loose interest? I did of course consider it as a profession, when I had this website handed over to me, I had big dreams. I was more motivated than ever. But I knew that burst of motivation wouldn’t last long enough for me to keep this blog going. Because whenever I sat down to write something- I couldn’t. I thought I just needed time but that’s not it. When I find something interesting I can write about it for hours, but I can’t force myself to hunt for topics and then write about them. So I knew I couldn’t professionally run this blog. I let it marinate for a while until I figured out how to allow myself to write but without feeling the pressure. And I think I came up with a conclusion that I will only write whenever I truly am motivated. Not because I need to engage the audience, not because I need to run this blog, but because I love to write and I love to let my works be out there so people can relate to them and interact with them which will motivate me even more.
