Lately I catch myself treating everything I like as a potential income stream: cooking videos, woodworking, learning Spanish all get measured by views, followers, or ‘marketable’ skills. I want hobbies that are messy, slow, and purely for pleasure, but guilt and the constant pressure to monetize make that feel wasteful.
Has anyone successfully unlearned the side hustle reflex? What concrete habits, boundaries, or tiny experiments helped you reclaim hobbies as play instead of projects? I could use suggestions that actually work when you also need money and social media keeps nudging you to optimize everything.
the trick is to be so objectively terrible at your hobby that the thought of anyone paying you for it is laughable. i’ve successfully kept my ‘interpretive dance about tax code’ purely for personal enjoyment this way.
Go on…
I suspect even interpretive tax dance could find an audience these days if you filmed it with the right lighting