“But it’ll only take me an hour to set you up on Etsy, Mum. It’ll be easy… trust me.” When my mother started making candles a few years ago, I couldn’t fathom why she didn’t want to sell them. They cost so little to make and I could run the marketing, take product photos and get some labels made. It made so much sense for her to earn a crust from the sweet scent of candles. She just had to keep doing what she did best and I’d take care of the rest. This would-be empire had so much going for it!
It wasn’t until I studied tea mastery recently that I realised that there is so much more to having a hobby than making money from the end product. I’m now a Certified Tea Master (yes, that’s a real thing) and when I am brewing tea, I’m in flow. It’s this amazing state where everything else melts away and I’m completely present as I boil the water, choose the right amount of leaves, pick which tea-ware to use and savour infusion after infusion.
So why would I ruin that enriching experience by worrying about how I’d ever rank in Google for ‘black tea’ or by trying to get the perfect social media shot while my morning tea gets cold?
There’s a lot of research into the state of flow we can reach via hobbies, with flow appearing to be a very close cousin of mindfulness. Doing something and being fully present without outside pressures has all kinds of benefits for creativity and your wellbeing. The science backing up the minutiae of all this is also getting stronger by the day: see books like The Neuroscience of Mindfulness by Dr Stan Rodski. But while these benefits are great, they’re not the aim of undertaking a hobby for fun; because doing something for your health is still an exercise in making every moment a productive one.
Much of the self-help advice we hear today boils down to the idea of following your passion, so it’s no surprise that hobby enthusiasts are in the firing line of societal pressure to follow our passions all the way to the bank.
Now I understand hobbies for what they really are: a comforting break from the outside world, not a source of extra work or self-improvement. And if you feel like you need to press pause from time to time, it’s a good thing to mess around on the guitar without uploading your music to SoundCloud; or to play chess and not have a YouTube channel documenting your best moves. We all need space in our lives where we can be playful and lighthearted; productivity be damned.
The point is that having fun for the sake of it is okay. A walk in the park can simply be a walk and not a chance to listen to a podcast that will teach you how to get your side hustle off the ground or why you need a morning routine. You can watch rom-coms or action films on the weekend and not stress about tuning into something more highbrow to discuss at work on Monday. At the risk of sounding like a Dr Seuss quote, your downtime is about enjoying the things that make you distinctly you.
We all need space in our lives where we can be playful and lighthearted; productivity be damned.
Much of the self-help advice we hear today boils down to the idea of following your passion, so it’s no surprise that hobby enthusiasts are in the firing line of societal pressure to follow our passions all the way to the bank. However, it’s also worth remembering that suggestions to monetise leisurely pursuits often come from a place of well-intentioned admiration too. We now worship all things artisan in part because we are so detached from how everyday items are made. So if you can make something from scratch, chances are the people around you think it’s damn impressive that you can turn raw materials into a fully formed object. And that’s why they helpfully suggest that you could make a buck or two from your hobby. Just like I did when I wanted Mum to roll up her sleeves and dive into the candle game.
As for me, I may eventually turn my tea obsession into some kind of business, but for now there are so many other things fighting for my attention that I’m resisting the temptation to add even more to my plate. Instead I’ll take life one perfectly brewed cuppa at a time.
Words: Melinda Halloran
As seen in Swell Issue 5.
