Everyone needs a hobby

After a day of monotonous work, most people want to cool off with an activity they find relaxing. Perhaps one may also want to keep this activity separate from what they do for work. And in my case, that work is music. For some people, music is not seen as a serious profession but rather a recreational activity. And honestly, I would love to do things related to music without the pressure of time or money as well.

How did I get into making, teaching and playing music for a living? As one might expect, it started out as a hobby. I discovered it in my teens, and going to school to study the subject academically felt natural. Working with music full-time after said period of studying felt natural as well. But I suffered an excruciating burn-out last year, and the cause of this burnout is related to the subject-matter of this post.

What makes a hobby enjoyable?

What makes a hobby enjoyable? I'd argue that it's all about control. A recreational activity is something we do in our spare time, on our own terms, whenever we want and however we want. In other words: as opposed to whatever job we have (where our working conditions are decided for us by someone else) a hobby is something in our life we have full control over. This fact alone makes a hobby enjoyable.

To tail back to the previous paragraph regarding my work as a musician: as music stopped functioning solely as a recreational outlet for my life and started to merge into my sources of income, the conditions (and motivations) for why I did music changed; a metamorphosis I had not acknowledged properly. All of a sudden, I had clients, students and managers that relied on me to do my work - my working conditions were now indirectly decided by someone else. I had lost control. The burnout I had suffered last year occurred due to this simple loss of control.

Regaining control

Back in 2024/2025 I had re-ignited my childhood love for programming and computer science, but I hadn't yet at that point found a "use" for it in my life. It wasn't until the burnout last year that I finally had found a purpose for it. Programming is extremely fun, and it engages my brain in exactly the same way music does - and so, since music now couldn't solely be considered a hobby to me anymore, I started programming recreationally to fill in the gaps of the day where I wasn't working on music. Programming gave me an outlet and a new-found sense of control that I could use to fuel my journey as a musician and audio-engineer.

Your hobby doesn't have to be a business if you don't want to

In social media today, there are influencers and various ads pushing music-producers, guitarists, programmers, writers, painters, all kinds of artists to turn their passion into a commercial business - often utilizing tactics like fear (if you don't take your passion seriously you will regret it later in life), FOMO (fear-of-missing-out) and flat-out lies (you'll live a more fun and easy life since you can work on the things you actually enjoy) but I implore you to not fall for it. Instead, ask yourself this question: "am I doing this because it makes me happy, or because I believe it might give me money and validation from other people once I get good at it?". If your answer to that question is the latter, find another hobby and be kinder to yourself. If your answer to that question is the former, be content with your answer and stay happy.