It Is Fine to Stay Mediocre at What You Love

I tried piano and guitar without any plan to record an album. Playing was the point. During COVID, I tried streaming my games and ended up farming clips: playing for footage instead of for the game. The fun drained out. I dislike the spreadsheet version of a hobby: check the stats, find the fastest route to improvement, ask whether you are on track. A hobby should not have to earn money, attract an audience or show a respectable rate of improvement. I want the freedom to stay mediocre at something I enjoy. That is different from demanding praise for mediocrity. Nobody owes me an audience. An imagined one does not get to run my evenings.

Earning money from an interest can help pay for the time and materials needed to pursue it. For someone who needs the income, unpaid recreation is a luxury, not a moral achievement. In the Federal Reserve’s October 2024 household survey,^[1] 31% of U.S. adults who did gig activities in the prior month^[2] agreed they would have trouble making ends meet without them; a larger share, 42%, disagreed, and 27% neither agreed nor disagreed. These are weighted shares; 2,395 people answered the question. The category covers reselling possessions, rentals and short-term tasks,^[3] not just monetized hobbies. Necessity is a compelling reason to sell something. Having something to sell is not an obligation.

Donut chart of weighted responses among U.S. adults who did gig activities in the month before the October 2024 survey. Asked whether they would have trouble making ends meet without those activities, 31% agreed, 27% neither agreed nor disagreed and 42% disagreed. The question had 2,395 unweighted respondents. — Among U.S. adults who did gig activities in the month before the October 2024 survey, 42% disagreed that they would have trouble making ends meet without them, compared with 31% who agreed. Source: Federal Reserve Board.^[2]

The pressure does not require a paying customer. In an experiment published in 2021, Gabriela Tonietto and her co-authors randomly assigned 351 undergraduates to read an article calling leisure wasteful while praising its benefits, or a control article about coffee makers.^{[4, p. 6]} The first group rated a subsequent cat video about 8 points lower for enjoyment on a scale from 0 to 100. That is a small effect from a laboratory diversion, not a measure of hobby burnout. In a companion experiment, calling leisure productive produced no detectable enjoyment gain over the control. Telling ourselves that relaxation will make us more productive tomorrow still leaves productivity in charge.

Nor do I want to make indifference a virtue. Learning a difficult passage can be the pleasure; keeping score can be part of the game. An amateur who has practiced enough to play for friends need not keep training as though a concert hall were waiting. Reaching a plateau does not invalidate that work. The question is whether I chose the test or started obeying it because an unmeasured activity seemed embarrassing. I collect Hot Wheels and little knickknacks because I enjoy it, without trying to compete against other collectors. Staying an amateur can mean leaving money unearned and skills undeveloped. I accept that cost. A hobby that never earns a dollar has not failed.

The next time someone tells me they play guitar, I will ask what they like playing, not whether they have built an audience. If they play me something, I will listen without asking where the project is going. A few wrong notes are a fair price for a song nobody is selling.

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