Our parents discovered leisure. We killed it.
The consequences of monetizing your bliss
My great aunt loved to press flowers. She lived in the Northeast corner of California — the part nobody talks about — where the elevation is so high and the climate so dry you’ll get nosebleeds. The flowers were bright orange Indian paintbrush, delicate lupine, earthy sage.
Often she’d hike the mountains that border Nevada, or the stream beds that crust over in summer, searching for new plant life. She’d compare her treasures to botany books, then label and press them for safekeeping. A few times, she couldn’t find entries at all; she’d discovered plant species that no one had named. This earned her small accolades from the scientific community, but really she just loved to press flowers.
She was a hobbyist by nature. When not caring for family, she would dry pine needles and weave them into coasters or Christmas ornaments. But she was also a product of her time. In the post-war era, hobbies were what people did in their spare time, after work: basketball, cooking, writing poetry, fixing motorcycles. These were activities people didn’t feel whole without.
My great aunt died not long ago, in 2000, but she would have a hard time understanding how my generation uses its spare time. For many of us, the hobby is dead. Our work lives have merged with our free time, and hobbies are now often indistinguishable from second jobs. In a culture obsessed with productivity, the hobby has become the next venture.
After the US survived two world wars and the economic fragility they wrought, the American middle class discovered a new definition of leisure. The Industrial Revolution had already freed up more time than ever before. By 1950, the average work week hovered around 40 hours, down from 70 in 1860. Union membership peaked in 1954 at 35% of the population, contributing to job security and higher wages, and GDP rose 250% between 1945 and 1960.
This economic prosperity, together with technological innovation, created the modern corporation. These organizations offered structured work weeks, job security, higher pay, and paid vacations, but let their employees go home at 5pm.
From disposable income the leisure industry was born — and welcomed by 60 million people. The American road trip, motels, summer camps, and amusement parks all vied for travel dollars. People built model planes in their basements and learned to cook fancy foreign food. Youth culture emerged because, for the first time in American history, children were generally not expected to help with work. By 1958, spending on leisure activities amounted to $34 billion per year.
Leisure came to define a person’s identity during this time, in many cases superseding career identity. Having a hobby was not only accessible, it was a status symbol. It meant one had time to relax, a privilege previously enjoyed only by the very wealthy. The “automatic nature” of many jobs led to “an increasing number of workers to look not to work but to leisure for satisfaction,” wrote New York Times book reviewer Erik Barnouw in 1958:
“The history of past centuries has been written mainly in terms of the work men did. We may be coming to a time when men’s leisure activities will be at least an equally fruitful field for inquiry, reflecting not only the achievements of an age but also its tensions, frustrations, and search for values.”
Barnouw was wrong, of course. Post-war prosperity petered out, replaced by civil unrest, oil shortages, and economic uncertainty. Though the US economy rebounded in the mid-1980s, the power of the unions continued to decline and foreign competition to increase. The idea of a job for life and a solid pension disappeared from many professions. 1993 marked a pivotal year: Sears laid off 50,000 workers due to competition from Walmart; Xerox cut 10,000 jobs, nearly 10% of its staff; and IBM let go 60,000 workers, the company’s first layoffs in its 80-year history.
By the time of the recession of the late aughts, traditional jobs simply weren’t available to many young people. And those who did work were discontent. In 2010, only 42.6% of workers were satisfied in their jobs, an all-time low since research began in 1987.
With fewer reasons to stay in one job, workers began to explore a wider variety of options. For some, these options included turning a hobby into a business. Young people turned to what they loved, what they were good at, with an entrepreneurial mindset angled toward self-employment. It’s why we have so many artisan lollipops and food trucks.
The American economy has fared better in recent years, but the millennial dogma to follow one’s bliss remains. According to a 2015 poll, older Americans’ primary concern about their first job was earning money or learning skills. By contrast, 57% of millennials prioritized doing something they found enjoyable and that made a difference. Half said they would take a pay cut to find work that matches their values, and would switch jobs as their values changed.
Instead of viewing work as the inevitable grind and hobbies as core to one’s identity, as in the post-war era, today’s professionals strive to equate career with leisure. A Quartz piece published this month calls this new phenomenon “the journey of duality,” as if Gwyneth Paltrow coined a new way to say “working two jobs.” Phyllis Korkki writes, “The secret to a side hustle for the soul is to believe in the power of incrementalism. Know that 20 minutes here and there add up. We can make it a priority to find time to devote to personally meaningful endeavors.”
Loving what one does is an utopian ideal. Few will argue against it. But it’s worth remembering a couple of things. Hobbies were something a broad swathe of people could enjoy, while the side hustle is much more middle-class phenomenon. And even those who can afford what Robert A. Stebbins, author of Serious Leisure: A Perspective for Our Time, calls “leisure careers,” might be better off taking a break from being productive.
That’s tough when we’re being conditioned to love our jobs. But perhaps we can tear a page from the post-war book regarding boundaries. If the future of work is bliss, we still need to know when to put it down and pick up something else, whether it’s family game night, hockey league, or just being with nature—happiness simply for the sake of it.
For my great aunt, flower collecting was a path to peace outside the home. It was a meditative return to nature, something she could own and be alone with. It was not work. Her flower-pressing excursions were citizen science by happy coincidence.
Still, I can’t help but imagine her today, perhaps earning a paycheck as she hunted for new plant species, logging 47 hours per week among the dusty hills of Northeast California. Would it taint the purity of her hobby? Or would it enhance her life?
Maybe it wouldn’t be the worst thing. Then again, I’m a millennial.
