How the money-making hustle enforces masses for commercialising hobbies and passion?
“You don’t need to monetise, optimise or organise your joy. Your hobby can be anything but at the end of the day, you don’t need to commercialise it,” says Jayesh, who is a photographer and podcaster, with an Instagram community – Awara Musaafir.
Do you end up being in the spiral when you start to question everything you do just for fun? Does the thought that what are you getting out of what you are doing when you just practise your hobby? That every time when you pick up a pencil to draw, a paintbrush to paint, a guitar to play music, a notepad to just write because you like doing it, do you feel guilty and feel like wasting time? Do you think about what you are getting out of it most often? If yes, then this is how the money making hustle, the hustle culture is feeding the idea of commercialising hobbies and passion.
Commercialising hobbies and passion
“When you are starting your hobby, there shouldn’t be a point where you choose it, thinking will you be able to achieve something out of it or choosing it because a lot of people are doing it and becoming successful. Your hobby should purely be based on what you like doing. What gives you job” added Jayesh remarking what hustle culture has done to us. Jayesh, talking about his own experience says, “I love to read books, read fiction. That’s my hobby. How to commercialise it? I can’t. So, should I stop pursuing it?”
Hobbies are leisure and the money-making hustle doesn’t wholeheartedly favour it
A study by the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology discovered that those who agree with the idea that productivity is more essential than leisure have been found with poor mental health. In the study, the people who considered leisure or free time to be wasteful reported less enjoyment of anything enjoyable and were shown to be more likely to suffer from dissatisfaction, stress, and depression. The study concludes redefining ‘leisure’ as a necessity and not a waste of time can lower stress.
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The act of remaining productive all the time is what’s the idea behind not appreciating small moments of cherishing hobbies.
Hobbies, Mental Health and Escape
The study we just talked about emphasises on how leisure activities should be promoted for people to have a better state of mind. “Hobbies are an escape from the usual.” If you keep doing the same thing, there will be a point where you will burn out, start finding it monotonous. And that’s where you bring in your hobby. “It’s something to give you a space to come out of the world that’s monotonous for you. And ofcourse, it will help you in keep moving.” – Jayesh.
The pressure of becoming the best at your hobby even is from where commercialising hobbies and passion starts from
Now, schools and even parents have started to include extracurricular and are encouraging more of them. But yet another toxic idea that gets attached to it is having the child perform the best at it. The schools grade children on the basis of their extracurricular performance. Parents ensure that the child is taking some or the other class to improve their extracurricular. Well, this absolutely is great but the motive behind the same is often toxic.
Parents want their children to excel at everything. They want the child to draw better, sing better, dance better and so on. Well, if the child has the interest, there’s no harm in it. But if the promoting child for extracurricular is backed by the idea of competing for it, it may turn out toxic.
What’s the bottom line? How the money-making hustle enforces masses for commercialising hobbies and passion?
We need to earn money for a living. This fact can’t change. Money making is important. What’s not important is doing everything to make money out of it. What money making hustle does is it makes people selective for hobbies. It makes being productive as the stepping stone of everything. Makes making money the measurement of productivity. So, if people end up not making anything out of their hobby, they see it as a waste of time. They either give up on that hobby and choose some other one that could pay them well or simple question their act of finding joy in their hobbies.
