You’re Allowed to be Bad at Your Hobbies
And you don’t ever have to get good.
I have written a lot of stuff (just, so many articles) on turning hobbies into side-hustles and how distasteful I find that. However, I want to expand on a point I’ve only touched on a little bit in those articles: allowing yourself to be bad at something.
A hobby, by definition, is something that you do for fun. Something that brings you joy or happiness. It doesn’t have to be productive, it doesn’t have to be useful, and it certainly doesn’t have to make you money.
But, one of the things that often gets overlooked about hobbies is that it’s okay to be bad at them. Generally speaking, unless you’re a prodigy, you’re not going to be immediately good at whatever you try. So, you have to go through the process of being bad at something before you can get good at that thing, just like everyone else.
Unfortunately, that’s where a lot of people get hung up. Generally, when you do something, the goal is to be good at it. However, nobody likes being bad at something — if you’re bad at it, why even bother?
There is a sort-of joke that floats around my social media circles about all the kids who were put in gifted classes in school and are now burnt out and depressed because of all the expectations put on them as kids…
