In which I ramble about hobbies and the arts being important

one of the collages I made for fun

“Never pass up the chance to expand the number of things that bring you joy.”

For a brief semester in college I was a business major. I had no idea what to major in because I love, more than anything else, to learn things. Learning things supercedes my interest in any one particular subject of things I could have chosen to learn.

I graduated with an English major, a business minor, a telecom minor, and enough credits to almost have a philosophy minor and a French minor. I also delighted in taking classes in publishing, classics, political science, biology, psych, and even, like, statistics and calculus. I’m not as good at biology, stats, and calculus as I am at English and history but, again, it is the absolute best to go from not knowing something to knowing something.

When my current students complain about gen eds, I want to shake them (metaphorically, don’t worry) and shout “Do you even know how lucky you are to get to LEARN THINGS ABOUT INTERESTING THINGS?” You can easily spend the rest of your life not having the space to just learn without some specific monetary or practical purpose unless you make the effort, so I want them enjoy it while they can.

I learned a lot in undergrad, but one thing I think about almost on a daily basis is something a management professor told us within a larger lesson I can’t remember: never pass up the chance to expand the number of things that bring you joy. He presented this to us in the form of a story about him going from hating opera to loving opera because he made it his mission to try to learn about things he didn’t like or understand.

Whenever I feel guilty about my life as a generalist rather than a specialist or just taking a creative writing or painting class for fun, his lesson echoes in my ears and reminds me that I can live a life whose purpose is expansive and experiential rather than efficient and economical.

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My favorite event of the year, The Tonys, were on a few months ago.

Since as far back as I can remember, the theme of the Tonys has been twofold: 1) please please come to New York and see a show, pretty please look how fun it is! 2) we are inspiring the next generation of Broadway talent and Tony winners. Within this twofold theme there are two distinct groups that are important to theater, the audience and the professionals.

I want to take a second to celebrate everyone in between. High school performers, community theater performers, people who put on shows with their friends in their neighborhoods, people who sing in their cars., people who started out in theater and then pivoted to something else. We’ve created a culture in which we define everything in terms of achievement, success, and monteary benefit. Activities — from sports to art to performance — take place across a much wider range of engagement and should be recognized as such.

I love when the Tony winners talk about how they used to watch the Tonys and now they’re winning a Tony, but there are a lot of us who grew up watching the Tonys who will never attend the awards in person. The awards show is no less important to those of us without the desire, talent, drive, and luck to make it onto a Broadway stage.

I worry that this kind of Tonys rhetoric cedes ground to those who are right now actively fighting to cut every facet of non-efficient or monetizeable creativity out of our society.

College has been reduced to a job skills training program. Arts and humanties are being defunded everywhere from schools to public serving institutions. AI companies and cultists are salivating at the prospect of advanced predictive text taking the place of human writers, thinkers, and artists. At the very least those of us who love the arts should stop making arguments for why the arts and humanities matter only in achievement-based terms (i.e. job skills and encouraging the next generation of professionals and celebrities).

To me this is tied into the movement to monetize any and all of our hobbies and to work to optimize every part of our day. The only hobby that doesn’t seem to fall victim to this is any form of exercise, but I think that’s because our society’s obsession with being thin/jacked is the only thing that rivals our obsession with money. Obviously, there aren’t time for hobbies if you’re raising a family or working three jobs just to be able to survive. The long term answer to this problem, though, isn’t to demonize the arts. It’s to more vigorously fight for collective solutions like universal healthcare, universal basic income and other social safety nets that give people the breathing room they need to live lives that don’t solely consist of survival. Do we really want to build a world where there is no room for joy, for inefficiency, for doing things for fun? Are we ok with only wealthy people having the time, money and space to create art? Do we want all art to be created only by the the most privileged among us?

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It’s healthy to try a lot of things.

If we do want to have this argument by ceding ground to the individualist and careerists, we could look at studies that show the non-monetary benefits of hobbies: mental health, brain health, community building etc, creativity, emotional regulation, problem solving.

I am currently working on a book about stand-up comedy that focuses on local comedy scenes and incorporates interviews with many people who perform stand-up for fun with no aspirations of making it into a career. I was struck in so many interviews with how much people can get out of belonging to a community of similar weirdos. My subjects named as their reasons for doing stand-up building confidence, building community, and the simple high you get from making people laugh or doing something most people find terrifying. Over the past four years, I’ve tried roller skating, gardening, painting, collaging, creative writing, and rowing. And I have fought with my own brain a lot of the time that told me that I shouldn’t be “wasting time.”

Studies show that hobbies improve mental and physical health and combat lonliness. The arts helps teens and kids with self-esteem, mental health, creativity, and problem solving. None of this is new or surprising information - people generaly know this. But we’re seeing the arts and humanities getting cut across the board in K-12 and higher education with on obsessive focus on making sure kids are trained for the exact skills for the exact job they ultimately will get. It took me unti lI was an adult to learn that it’s ok to do stuff without being good at it or without having an ultimate goal. Students need to be able to take risks and fail without it causing a mental health spiral and adults need to be able to keep doing extra curriculars and explore different facets of themselves without having to specialize or turn it into a side gig.

My therapist told me a few months ago when I lamented about being a dilitente who could never choose one thing to focus or what my ultimate purpose or passion is - “what if your purpose in life is to exprience things?” What if we changed our focus from individual achievement to community and experience? I could have focused on one thing I did really well and stuck to that one thing my whole life and racked up accomplishments — I’m good at a lot of things—- but I’m trying to learn to refocus and think more about the breadth of things I’ve gotten to experience as an accomplishment in itself. What if we all gave ourselves that permission?