Consuming other people’s content is not a hobby
Recently I’ve chatted with a friend of mine about ways of spending our free time. As it turned out, mine is spent on running, reading books and watching TV shows. For some of those activities, I’ve even felt a small sense of pride when I was telling to this friend about them. For example, for the last 5 years or so, I’m obsessed with self improvement so I read mostly non-fiction self development books and I find that fact something to be proud of.
However, as I’ve started bragging about this and about effects of running on serotonin levels, she interrupted me and asked “OK, OK, but what can you create? In what way your creativity gets manifested?”
This got me. I’ve became aware of the fact that my “hobbies” and my free time, with running excluded (which is actually not a hobby, it is more just an activity that can be assigned to healthy living), can be narrowed to one word — consuming.
As I’m a computer programmer, I’ve tried to get myself out of it by stating that I make apps on my free time, but the fact is — it’s simply not true anymore, I’ve stopped doing this a few years ago (read: laziness).
Consuming other people’s content is not a hobby
Don’t get me wrong. I think that there is nothing bad in spending a reasonable amount of time on consuming other people’s content. Reading a good non-fiction (or fiction) book can change your life. Creative hobby that is closest to reading is writing, and Stephen King said “If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time or the tools to write.“
On positive note, binge watching House of Cards on Netflix can teach us a lot about what would someone do to gain power, about corruption and intricacies of political elite. Watching 13 Reasons Why can teach us about fragility of human feelings and that our seemingly harmless actions can greatly affect other people. Twin Peaks can teach us… well… I don’t exactly know what can Twin Peaks taught us, but it can be fun to watch. :)
The problem arises when consuming content becomes the exclusive way of spending our free time and when we are presenting this kind of activities as our hobbies. In my case, often, in need for inspiration I’ve consumed enormous amounts of content. I’ve watched Silicon Valley to inspire me for making a mobile app. After four seasons, there is no app. Motivation — vaporized. As Steven Pressfield would say in his brilliant book The War of Art, this force that distracts us from creative work is called Resistance.
I am perfectly aware of the fact that this “revelation” of mine is nothing new and it’s actually very well known fact, particularly in arts. In the past, I’ve been thinking a lot about this myself, but I’ve never decided to do anything about it — until now.
So, as it turned out, I’ve decided that I will start blogging here on Medium. On my self improvement path, I often have a lot of thoughts and reflections that I would like to share. I am fully aware of the fact that the formulation and conversion of my thoughts into words is not yet on the quality level I would wish it is, but practice makes perfect.
And, maybe most importantly, writing is something that is definitely in domain of creative hobbies.