Two good friends of mine at an old job were discussing the parts each of them needed for their PC builds. The conversation ran rampant of prices for advanced motherboards, fans, and the various specs they needed in order to cram every bit of RAM out of their highly-tuned machines in hopes of having the best PC gaming experience possible. Eventually the conversation turned to me and the type of computer I own (spoiler: a refurbished laptop that was purchased at a discount) when one of my friends quipped “Well that’s because Dan doesn’t have any hobbies” and the rest of the room chuckled at my mild expense before returning to work. However close with my old work pals I may be, I think he’s a bit misguided here.
As readers have likely noticed, reading is a regular pastime for me. I’m a frequent user of my local public library, and at the time frequented local bookstores (ahh, the pre-pandemic days!) and buying copies I enjoyed from ThriftBooks. While I’ve since moved away form ThriftBooks (their fulfillment practices are not the greatest in my experience), my reading has continued since then. Reading as an activity is a fairly recent activity in human history, with access to widespread public education not being very common through human history. However, now that barrier has been removed, it’s a hobby that is accessible to the masses. Mountains of evidence have been formed documenting the benefit of the activity, and I can personally attest to some of them. It is also a conduit that any literate person can use to improve themselves (which got me into it in the first place, at least in my adult life). Though, it seems because it is so widely accessible, that seems to not register as a real hobby.
Another passion of mine is fitness. What once began as a 14-year-old version of me being sick of being a benchwarmer on the football team and a serial last-place finisher on the track team as a freshman, evolved into an endeavor that I can’t see myself not doing. Fortunately, gyms have popped up everywhere, and fitness equipment manufacturers sell entry-level home models of their units for relatively low prices. Can’t afford those? Don’t knock the classic push-up, bodyweight squat, invisible chair, calf-raise on the bathtub and core workout routine. Again, anyone with a functional mobile body can partake (before you call me ableist, there are plenty of exercises that less-mobile people can perform as well), with spending little to no money on the pursuit to a better body. Even prison inmates indulge themselves in the pursuit to a stronger, fitter, leaner body (talk about a shoestring budget!). Regular intense exercise is the closest thing to a unanimous thumbs up we’re ever going to get from the medical community. Ho
I’ve casually written as a hobby for the last several years now, though it has taken off quite a bit in the last 18 months or so. It requires nothing more than a laptop (though I’ve graduated from a refurbished one to a new computer, one with a working fan and everything!). I was previously using Apache OpenOffice due to my refusal hundreds of dollars on Microsoft Office (refurbs don’t come with MS Office, sadly). Before the sinew hits the plastic keyboard however, paper-to-pen is a great way to organize and strategize thoughts. Fortunately, this is widely available to literally anybody living in the 1st or 2nd world. There is a mound of research studies that point towards the cognitive benefits of writing, both in the analog format and electronically.
I used to be heavily into video games, similar to my two old friends. However, back in college I had to trade my PS3 to a relative of mine in exchange for his laptop. My laptop had finally died, and I needed one to complete college with, so the trade needed to be made. As a result, I no longer owned a modern console and thus the world of gaming had passed me by for close to a decade. Now, I’m so far behind that I’ve basically walked away from gaming, save for franchise releases from my childhood/adolescence (Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy, Metal Gear Solid, etc). What once was an expensive hobby is now a relic of the past to me.
There are a few different possible interpretations of what my old colleagues consider a real hobby. Speculating, the most obvious one is that a real hobby must be expensive. While there is some truth to the adage of spending one’s money where they spend their time, spending large sums of money on an activity should not-and in my eyes, is not-a hard requirement for an activity to be a real hobby.
We should stop and question how that line of thinking came to be; why is there an assumed price tag associated with a real hobby? While I support capitalism, there is a line between capitalism and consumerism just-for-the-sake-of. The economy relies on consumer spending to a certain extent, however pulling out one’s wallet should not-and in many cases, is not– the barrier of entry to a fun way to spend one’s time or for personal growth. At what point do we not stop to question some of our underlying assumptions that society has drilled into us? I’ll gladly pick up this gauntlet; it is okay-repeat okay- to have a hobby that is inexpensive.
Another possible explanation of my friend’s statement is that the activity in question must not provide an obvious benefit to the person performing it; while exercising provides an obvious benefit to the athlete, the constructive benefit to one mowing down zombies on a 4K monitor with no discernible ethernet lag is less clear (though by no means am I condemning PC gaming). I’ll even concede that act of building a computer from scratch is certainly constructive (quite literally!). Admittedly, there has been a coerced variant to reading, writing and working out, thanks to school and society telling us to metaphorically eat your veggies. However, an activity can be both constructive and be a real hobby.
We should also question where society is going when hobbies that undeniably provide a benefit are looked at as weird or not real hobbies. Has our social programming really written us to believe that a beneficial activity is an undesirable one? What kind of society would that ultimately create? I shudder to think of the consequences of that scenario. It’s odd that this even needs to be said but it’s okay to have a hobby that benefits you.
Ultimately, how one chooses to spend their limited unscheduled time shouldn’t be shamed, especially for the lack of a price tag or perceived personal benefit. Writing an article is just as valid a pastime as mowing down zombies. Yes, you read that right, there’s also nothing wrong with mowing down zombies on a computer that cost more than cars I drove in college (though in fairness, that isn’t a high bar to clear). Given the choice, I’ll prefer my yellow legal pad and library card. If Rex and Todd (not their real names) are reading this, let’s knock back beers sometime!
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