New York Times:
I’m a little surprised by how many people tell me they have no hobbies. It may seem a small thing, but — at the risk of sounding grandiose — I see it as a sign of a civilization in decline. Yes, I know: We are all so very busy. Between work and family and social obligations, where are we supposed to find the time?
But there’s a deeper reason, I’ve come to think, that so many people don’t have hobbies: We’re afraid of being bad at them. Or rather, we are intimidated by the expectation — itself a hallmark of our intensely public, performative age — that we must actually be skilled at what we do in our free time.
Interesting theory but I don’t agree with it. I think people don’t have hobbies because they don’t have the time or the money to pursue them. My favourite “hobby” is riding my motorcycle but I can’t do it as much as I’d like for many reasons, money being one of them.
Yet people find time for HBO, Netflix, Hulu, cable tv, college sports, facebook, etc etc…
We’ve just replaced our free time with different pursuits. Consumption based ones.
But money has always been a limiting factor. I’m not convinced by his thesis, though I think there’s a grain of truth to it that stems from social media where we only really see the best of what people do (if someone does woodworking and is excellent at it, they post. If they’re not very good, they likely don’t post which skews the impression of what it means to do woodworking).
I wonder, too, if it’s about space. As more people move into condos or apartments, you forgo the possibility of doing some activities. I could woodwork in my house. But in the condos and apartments I used to live in? Nope.
I think it’s more a matter of attitude: Where is the person on the scale of Cause to Effect? Those closer to the Cause end are more interested in things; are more active; want to learn; want to create. Those closer to the Effect end, not so much.
Creativity doesn’t necessarily depend on money, or even explicit periods of time. One of my hobbies is to learn words and phrases of other languages. It’s free. It can be done in a few minutes at a time.
Perhaps, though, this is the result of not having a hobby to fill in that otherwise available time?
Yes, having a hobby requires the free time and necessary resources to pursue it. It doesn’t necessarily require creativity, merely an interest in devoting attention to something that brings pleasure.
Actually, I see this all of the time. People are afraid to try things because they won’t come out perfect on the first try…
To take your example, condos and apartments have plenty of space in which to woodwork. You simply need to change your perspective. No, you’re probably not going to fit and entire shop full of power tools into those spaces, but those tools also don’t define woodworking. For close to a year, I operated my professional shop out of a right-triangularly shaped space that was less than 200 square feet (and taught classes of up to four students at a time!). Key to this is that I use only hand tools, and not the corded type. This simple change, not only allowed me to stay in business until a larger, affordable space became available, but also offered other opportunities. Hand tools cost less, and are easier to maintain; I don’t send saw blades out to have them sharpened. I do it myself when I notice they’re not performing at peak. Hand tools are safer, so folks passing by my studio are free to come in and watch me work. With hand tools, I have direct knowledge of how the wood is reacting to the tool. Finally, hand tools save me time! I almost never spend time making jigs; just mark a line, and cut to it. All of this, however, requires the woodworker to develop their skills. This takes interest, and attention, both of which are lacking in our news-bite/social-media world…
A final thought…
If you’re carving small pieces of wood on a submarine, like a fellow student of mine was, you’re practicing woodworking.
Excellent points. Even in thinking about it, I limited myself.
Wouldn’t that stuff technically count as a hobby in the vein of reading? It’s all free time activities done for personal enjoyment.
My entire life has been filled with doing a lot of stuff and I’ve never felt the need to categorize it as “hobbies” even though most of it wasn’t what put food on the table.
I do think there’s a fear among many of being a beginner at things but for me, the messiness of being a beginner and figuring out how to get started is almost as appealing as being more skilled and having something wired.
Most of the things I’ve done I’m not all that good at but I keep at it, not caring all that much what others think.
The term and idea of a “hobby” has no appeal to me. It sounds like something you do when you’re bored.
I think there is also the waste associated with hobbies. Someone who wants to knit is going to make a lot of stuff in the process, most of which they have no use for and know no one else who does. There is a level of minimalism in modern society which is incompatible with many traditional hobbies. Add in the cost of the hobby compared to the low price of most commercially produced alternatives and the waste of the hobby grows even further.
It’s also not just that people fear being bad at something. In the past playing an instrument was a useful way to provide entertainment for a group even if you weren’t all that good. This was because there weren’t readily available alternatives. Now, everyone is walking around with constant access to professional music on-demand, so amateur music skills are far less useful.
I guess it’s because there are so many little distractions nowadays. Being always online, media-streaming, social networks, always carrying a handheld game-console, abundance of good (and long) tv-series… Just look at the screen time report on your phone – If it‘s more than two hours a week that‘s not „work“, then you know where the time you used to have for hobbies went.
The typical American lives in bigger residences with fewer people than they did 20 or 30 years ago. There was a dip during the housing crisis, but now home sizes are bigger than ever.
Also, even on cost, things like tools are cheaper now than they were a decade ago.
http://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/housing1.png