You need hobbies! An argument for doing something just for fun

Bit of an unusual one, but occasionally with this blog I just do a post about something I’ve been thinking about. One thing I’ve noticed lately is how few adults do ANY hobbies in the evening or at weekends, they just go to work and exist.

Now I know it’s very easy for me to say this as someone with no dependants or people I am caring for but I do work full time, I have a partner, a podcast, this blog and an attempt at a social life. I can understand what it’s like to be busy and how hard it gets to prioritise something that has no productive value.

I do believe, however, that going to work, coming home and then doing it all over again isn’t good for us. It’s not good for your mental health, it doesn’t given you any work-life balance because you aren’t really doing a life in the evenings.

You need something outside of work to be passionate about, even if it is just shitty paintings you never show a person, or gaming or reading and so on. So many people have no answer to the question ‘what do you do for fun?’.

What are you interested in? What are you passionate about? Curious about?

Learn a language badly, even if you’ll never speak it. Plant a garden that will inevitably die. Join a club.

For example, I recently went to Hobbycraft to try and find some fun, creative things to do and a bought this kit for making ‘pom friends’. Just look at the silly, pointless things I made:

These things, for want of a better word, feed the soul. It’s how you can meet people, connect with them, find the community so many millennials are lacking.

Work cannot be your whole identity, as someone who was made redundant last year and was confronted quite viciously with how much I am just a cog in the machine, making money for somebody else and subject to their whims. Work is longer guaranteed, giving your all to a job will not reap the same benefits it did for the generations before us. You need something to fill the rest of your waking hours with joy.

I’ve been seeing this trend over Tiktok of millennials embracing a ‘softer’ way of living: letting hustle culture go in favour of ‘granny’ hobbies.

Things in the world are very stressful and dark right now, I don’t know many people who are doing ‘well’, so I think it’s important to seek out small things to fulfil a creative, social, active or playful need.

Back to your regularly scheduled bookish nonsense next post!