A reflection on 10 years of unsuccessful hobbies
I am currently in the process of selling many of my worldly possessions. Around me lies the the numerous discarded and disused objects of my 20s: Professional sound equipment,, dj mixers, lighting from the period where I convinced myself I was going to make clubbing my sideline despite rather disliking the loud obnoxious atmosphere of most clubs. Paintball equipment, ammo, markers, and tactical gear from when my friends became very motivated to engage in ritual bruising and dirtying out in the woods as a form of exercise. Clothing, band shirts, and accessories from a period of personal style that seems utterly foreign to me now.
After spending my 20s freely pursuing any interest I came across I’ve accumulated more stuff that I can reasonably keep. I am a hobbyist, I quickly attach myself to a new activity and dive in without much more than a thought. The other side of that lifestyle is that there is no end to it, there’s no settling in or long-term goals, just satisfaction and then eventually complacency. However the time in my life where I could afford such dalliances is coming to an end. I no longer comfortably earn the kind of money to support large investments of time and money multiple hobbies nor does it benefit me to distract myself with these things. I will always be interested in cooking and luckily since Soylent hasn’t quite caught on yet, I will always need to be.
Video games and more recently cooking are things I’ve consistently dedicated large amounts of time to and so I’m left wondering whether to keep them as hobbies or work in one of these fields professionally. At the highest, most visible level both fields seem glamorous and highly rewarding but the reality is that for most of one’s career work consists of many long hours in inhospitable and highly stressful environments with little compensation.
Recently though I’ve come to understand the same goes for many fields. I expect working for a startup is much the same as working in a kitchen where employees are required to push themselves regularly in order to complete any task satisfactorily. I’ve recognized in myself an ability to dedicate and fully immerse myself in a task as long as I am interested in it. I know that I possess the kind of obsessive drive and critical thinking to be successful at a given task so long as my interest in it holds, the question I am left with is how to apply this approach to tasks that do not interest me, that is the crux of the problem I face.
In September I will be starting a UX & Product Design course run by Bitmaker Labs. From the research I have done, Bitmaker is pretty much the best skills boot camp in the city and as Toronto is the center of activity for startups and design, it is possibly the best in the country. It’s also extremely expensive, almost prohibitively so for myself. While it is well connected with the industry, it offers no hard guarantees of employment. It is also rumored to be highly challenging. I’ve had several years of professional experience in the web design field but I’d be lying if I said I felt resolutely confident in my skills in this moment. I completed several small projects since leaving f/t employment in the field a few years ago but I just have not had the motivation to really dive into any one thing the way I used to. I often find myself not wanting to include many of the completed projects in my portfolio simply because I do not feel they reflect what I believe are my true capabilities as a designer. However if I am to claim than I am better than the sum of my work, I believe I need to prove as much even if it’s just to myself.
September will be a crucial point in my life thus far, ahead of me I can see a future where I have achieved my goals of satisfactory, visible, engaging, and well compensated work. I can also see a future that is markedly less pleasant should I not secure employment rather immediately after the course concludes. I expect my success in this course will depend less on my abilities as a designer and more on my willingness and success in engaging socially with the people around me. This will likely be the greatest challenge and one I think about regularly as the course approaches.
For now my goals is to prepare myself for the course by raising funds, writing here in this blog, relaxing, and getting myself in a creative mindset every damn day. Several students from the course have kept records of their time during it, so I expect my thoughts will turn to matters more related to design at that time, for now though this is what I have.
