For The Next Lockdown, Please, Don’t Try to Monetize Your Hobbies
Hustle Culture is Going to Kill You if The Plague Doesn’t
Oh boy, we’re probably going into another lockdown, time for that existential dread from March to creep back in for the holidays. You know what that means: get out the knitting needles and pray to god that people don’t turn this into an issue that lasts another three years.
So, if you’re just as much of a burnout as I am, wondering what to do with all your free time, you probably have spent a lot of time trying crafts, new hobbies, new interests. Probably picked up your instrument of choice that’s been gathering dust for a few years, before subsequently remembering that guitar is hard and never touching it again.
It’s pretty clear that the pandemic has forced us all to find new ways to occupy our time that aren’t just binge-watching whatever is on the veritable buffet of streaming services we have now. And really, that’s great. I’ve seen a lot of people have their love for interests other than their job rekindled, and that’s just phenomenal.
However, for every single person that’s found their passion for sewing, I see someone else selling candles on Facebook.
Personally, I’ve spent a lot of this quarantine that I haven’t spent aimlessly wandering Indeed and LinkedIn, endlessly begging for the sweet release of death, instead working in the kitchen.
It’s been rather nice, actually. I’ve become an absolute sponge of cooking information, and I’ve even gotten good enough to the point where I can start experimenting and making my own recipes. It’s weird, since a year ago I was a college student that lived mostly on noodles, and now I’ve gone full Martha Stewart.
And yes, I too have fallen victim to the bread trap — go ahead, ask me if I’ve got dough rising.
Now, while this newfound passion for cooking is definitely a plus for my tinder profile (my prospects there are only slightly more dead than they are on LinkedIn), I’ve definitely gotten that…itch.
You know the one, the one that every single millennial has with literally everything they do:
“How can I monetize this.”
It’s become something of a running joke, among my family, my upcoming “Jam Business.” I’ve gotten rather good at making jellies and jams and after musing on how cheap and easy it actually is to make them, I jokingly said that I should really start hoarding and selling them.
Except then it kind of stopped being a joke. With the job market continuing to flatly refuse to answer any of my calls, there was a weird amount of support for my jelly market among those close to me. A few more suggestions that I should really start selling lunches, or deliver cookies.
No one DARED mention that I start a business — we all know exactly how well that goes for anyone in my generation. Starting a food business in rural America is something you do if you have way too much money and dousing with gasoline before setting it ablaze isn’t making it vanish quickly enough.
But nevertheless, there was that idea. “Hustle jelly. Hustle some cookies. Start selling them, you know.” I was enjoying myself in the kitchen, but that thought, the idea that “I’ve officially become good enough to profit off of this, therefore I should” kind of left a bitter taste in my mouth. And no, that wasn’t just the fruit pectin.
The other thing I’ve been doing to try to avoid this delightful dread that seems to creep into virtually every hour of my life is focusing on reading. I’ve read an honestly morally reprehensible quantity of books in the last year and frankly, I’m not even sure if I can recall how to communicate outside the realm of the written word — no, this isn’t a cry for help.
However, naturally, with anyone that reads a lot, the first question that someone asks, shortly after they recover from learning of my volume of book consumption is usually “do you have a book blog?” Occasionally, they’ll ask the far-worse, “do you do a book podcast?” The answers to which are, of course, “no, not really,” and “please, God, strike me down, away from this accursed earth,” respectively.
While I LOVE books, I’m really slow to review them. I have strong opinions on them, sure, and I can review them just fine, but I’m not exactly swift to put together a full piece of literary criticism. I was an English major, sure, but the kind that writes manuals and analyzes grammar, not the sort that tries to find meaning in Hemmingway.
Which isn’t to say I don’t care to read Hemmingway. Nor are my opinions weak enough that they shouldn’t be shared, necessarily (I’ve got hot takes for days on basically every memoir written in the last ten years.) I really value what I take from books, and I’m still trying to find a career that works with them, eventually.
But to put all my thoughts together, to edit it, to boil it all together into a blog post, functionally a product? It’s just…so disheartening. It’s really just an absolute chore to do on an activity that I otherwise just really enjoy doing. I just want to read. I don’t need to turn that into something for someone else to consume.
(If this blog slowly becomes littered with book reviews in the next few months, just know that I have completely given up and this is my life now.)
I know that we’re absolutely compelled to produce, produce, produce. That’s the name of the game, of course. Produce until you’re either so burnt out that you doomscroll and do literally nothing else, or until it literally kills you.
I know so many people that, at the first sign of the initial lockdown immediately began cries of “learn to code! You have to learn to code now, people are going to expect it once the pandemic is over!”
I’ve even heard rumors that a popular interview question is going to be “how did you spend your time during the pandemic,” with the expectation that you’re going to talk about some glorious journey of self-improvement that you’ve taken, or a new skill that you’ve learned.
Anyone with an ounce of integrity will regard this question with the “are you kidding me” flippancy that it deserves.
Frankly, the hustle culture is just too exhausting for too many of us. I find myself typing “jobs for sullen, low-energy people” into the search bar far too often as the listings continue to scream “WE NEED A HIGH-ENERGY, DEDICATED, OUTGOING PSYCHOPATH WHO IS GOING TO SHOUT ABOUT EXCITED THEY ARE EVERY STEP OF THE WAY.”
It’s exhausting, trying to start life right now. It’s truly draining, especially compared to the “well I dropped out of college and was able to find a job in under a month” fantasy that our parents and “I dropped out of high school and was able to find an entry-level job and work my way up to regional manager” fantasy that our grandparents had. Meanwhile, my (cum laude) diploma continues to do nothing but gather dust.
The things we’re going to be doing, we’re really just doing to try to cope with this reality. The reality that there’s so very little that we can control, and that trying to find hobbies that we can control is keeping us sane. Forcing yourself to try to monetize them is only going to continue to feed into the horrible culture of commodifying everything that brings you joy.
Really, I’d just like to be able to read, bake some cookies, and be left alone while trying to ignore the fact that we’re having a literal war’s worth of casualties every single week, without being reminded that I’m not contributing enough to the culture that turned this into a disaster in the first place. Thanks.
