There was one weekend after my divorce where I found myself utterly alone and without anything to do. I aimlessly scrolled through all the streaming platforms, but nothing piqued my interest. I called my friends, but no one picked up (yes, I’m aware of how sad that sounds). I browsed my collection of unread books, but there weren’t any titles that excited me. There was a palpable sense of ennui unlike anything I’d ever experienced. And then it struck me: I had no hobbies.
In the months that followed, it was the topic of conversation I had with my friends, my coworkers, my dentist, even my gyno. What did they do for fun? And, more importantly, could I co-opt it? As it turns out, anytime I lamented about my lack of interests outside of work and my social life, the sentiment was echoed back at me. One friend told me how much she hated it when dates asked her what her hobbies were — because she had none.
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This hobbylessness, I realized, was something of an epidemic — and it’s most evident on social media, on which content creators suggest hobby after hobby while on their own personal quest to find hobbies that’ll stick. On TikTok, the hashtag #HobbyTok has accrued 82.6 million posts, and counting.
So, I resolved to find one: I started to learn a new language, I began training for a half marathon, I picked up new recipes to try. But those only consumed so much of my time. Outside of work, this unsettling, listless energy crept up on me. Until one day, I was invited to a crochet class, and with shaky, trepidatious, unsure fingers managed to haphazardly create a granny square — and I was hooked. I proceeded to crochet wool blankets, winter accessories, and amigurumi plush toys before venturing into clothing (shorts! tops! dresses!). I marveled at how a system of loops could transform a skein of yarn into a masterpiece. In many ways, it’s like writing: to create something from nothing. But I found immense joy in the differences — the way it forced me to slow down, to hone my skills, to revel in the craftsmanship, to work with my hands. I loved not being so tethered to screens.
But as months of crocheting went by, another feeling began to pull at the strings of my joy: guilt. I was investing so much of my time and energy into crocheting — and it was all…for fun. Shouldn’t I be monetizing this? Shouldn’t I be turning this into a side hustle?
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In “Money Moves,” the most recent study conducted by R29 Intelligence to examine how women are responding to the cost-of-living crisis, our team of analysts found that 60% of women say money occupies over half of their mental space, that 62% say they feel negative emotions when thinking about their financial situation (with words like “stressed,” “worried,” and “frustrated” as top descriptors), and that when faced with financial turmoil, women tend to “insource” rather than “outsource.” In other words, when money is tight, women are more likely to increase their side hustle (32%) or sell some of the things they own (29%), as opposed to borrowing money from friends or taking out a loan.
My friend Emma Sarran Webster’s search-for-a-hobby journey paralleled mine, only that she ended up turning hers — muraling — into a side hustle. “Muraling is expensive, it takes a lot of time, and I only have so many walls, so it wasn’t really practical as a hobby. I couldn’t spend time on it without monetizing it,” she told me. “I had already monetized something I love doing — by being a writer — and I’ve become really burnt out by it. Muraling gets me outside and off my computer and it balances out my work as a writer. Like any job, muraling will, at times, be frustrating and hard, but I’m hopeful that it’ll still bring me joy as I go on.”
Financial therapist Lindsay Bryan-Podvin saw the hobby-turned-side-hustle trend skyrocket during the pandemic, as women began to show interest in entrepreneurship. “Oftentimes it’s women who are in caregiving roles and who leave traditional employment and find creative ways to generate income,” says Bryan-Podvin, who baked sourdough bread during the pandemic and at one point, baked 55 loaves in one month to give to friends and neighbors. But she made the conscious decision not to sell them, because baking was something that brought her joy. “It’s empowering [to have the opportunity to sell my goods], but also we need to think about the systems that push us to feel like our hobbies have to become side hustles.”
I recognize that the guilt I feel throws into sharp relief just how much we internalize the effects of living in a capitalist society — if you’re not hustling, if you’re not making the most of every minute, if you’re not participating in the rat race, then you’re not doing enough. To be entirely honest, I’m not sure what the solve is, but I do know that adulthood — and life — is excruciatingly hard, so if there’s something that brings me joy, perhaps I should just leave it at that.
Aja Evans, a board-certified therapist and coach who specializes in financial therapy, says it best: “If you take away that hobby because you’ve now monetized it, it’s no longer an outlet — it’s now another way you've added stress to yourself, because you’re thinking about growing it or scaling it on top of a 9-to-5 job. We cannot monetize everything — we need hobbies that bring us joy, the things that make us feel good in our bodies and our mental state.”
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