Keeping Hobbies Healthy
I started collecting and building Lego in 2014, when my coaching passion became my full-time job. I knew that I would need something to help me balance out the stresses of work and travel. Over time, I engaged with online communities and gradually started creating content around the hobby.
It was fun until I found myself more interested in how many likes each picture got than the process of building and taking the picture.
Unfortunately, this is one of the pitfalls of hobbies in the modern era: letting social media and “hustle culture” erode our enjoyment of them. I learned the hard way that while there can be many mental benefits to hobbies, there can also be some serious drawbacks when you start getting wrapped up in social media engagement or trying to monetize it as a side hustle.
Why hobbies are so great
Whether it’s Lego, crochet, hiking, or a million other possibilities, hobbies provide people with a chance to disconnect from work and do something for themselves. While many people understand this on the surface (and research supports their benefits), let’s take a quick look at what’s going on in our brains.
Happy brain chemicals
In Habits of a Happy Brain, Dr. Loretta Graziano Breuning details four of the “happy chemicals” that our brains produce: dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and endorphins.
Dopamine is widely understood as the hormone that’s triggered by the pursuit and achievement of a goal. Collectors know this feeling very well, but so do athletes and those with other pursuits.
Happy about achieving a new PR in the gym? Happy that your garden looks great as a reward for your effort and care? Finally finished that quilt or blanket? Thank dopamine.
Oxytocin is the “love drug.” It provides joy from the feeling of connectedness and trust with others. When fellow gym-goers cheer you on for a PR, or you talk to fellow hobbyists about your love of flowers, crochet techniques, or any other detail, your oxytocin begins to flow.
Thanks to social media, even solitary hobbies have become a way to connect with others who share the same passion. Almost regardless of your interest, there are Facebook groups and Discord servers you can join, as well as content creators and communities on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram.
Serotonin is the happy chemical that is triggered by recognition and status within a community. Compliments and cheers put this chemical into production, which can also have a bit of a dark side for people who are competitive.
Endorphins mostly come from physical exertion, so fitness enthusiasts, runners, or others who put in a lot of physical work might have endorphins as a chemical motivator.
Different hobbies, different brains
Because each individual is unique and pursues their own hobbies, we all get a different mix of these chemicals.
As I mentioned above, I’ve collected Lego for years and found a lot of enjoyment in it, connecting with communities on social media and other platforms. Unfortunately, I also fell into the darker side of these happy brain chemicals as I started chasing more and more of them.
Pitfalls to watch out for
Our brains want these chemicals. They make us feel good, but once they’re absorbed back into our bodies, the happiness fades, and we look for ways to create more.
Social media struggles
Dopamine isn’t just something we get from consuming social media. If you create content about your hobby, you’re also opening those floodgates. Let’s say you crocheted a super-cute stuffed animal. You’re proud of it, so you post a picture. Every time you see new likes or comments, your brain lights up.
The next time you post, the effect isn’t as strong. It takes more likes and comments to create the same amount of happy brain chemicals. If you get fewer or even the same number of likes, you feel disappointed because those chemicals aren’t being produced nearly as much.
This is where the connection with community (oxytocin) starts taking a back seat to achievement and prestige (dopamine and serotonin).
If you lean even more into creating content about your hobby, it’s hard not to get caught up in the likes, comments, and overall reach because your brain converts those things into happy chemicals—and then wants to chase more.
The side hustle
I remember the day I decided to start streaming on Twitch. Twitch is a live-streaming platform where creators can build communities and monetize their content. I thought to myself, “I’m building Lego anyway—why not make a bit of money off of it? How hard could it be?”
As it turns out, it wasn’t that hard and even brought me a lot of joy as I built up the community. Unfortunately, monetizing your hobby turns it into work. I eventually started to feel burned out, losing passion for both streaming and Lego.
The truth about side hustles
According to sidehustlenation.com, the average side hustle nets a person $1,122 per month, but the median income is much lower at $200 per month. This means that the average is extremely skewed by top earners, while most people are much closer to that $200 income.
This is while the average person spends 11 to 16 hours per week on it.
This isn’t to say that no one should work part-time on a passion project to increase their income. Some of the greatest success stories in business come from people doing just that.
What’s important to remember, though, is that once it’s less about your own enjoyment than about money or pursuing status within your community, it’s no longer a hobby.
Keeping perspective
Let’s circle back to what a hobby really is. I started building Lego specifically to give me something to do to relax and refresh. None of my friends were really into Lego at the time (this was well before it gained a lot of mainstream popularity in the 2020s), so I found an online community of geeky Lego lovers to connect with.
Everything was great until I started valuing my hobby based on engagement with my content (and later the money I made from it). I only understood why this happened after reading Habits of a Happy Brain.
In order to maintain perspective—and to really get the most out of hobbies—we need to keep the definition of a hobby in mind:
A hobby is a regular, ongoing activity that is undertaken for pleasure, in one’s own time, without professional or financial gain (Daily, 2018).
The key words here are “for pleasure” and “without professional or financial gain.” The closer our definition of a hobby comes to the definition of work, the less benefit we get from it.
Hobbies can provide a wide array of benefits for mental health. We just need to remember to do them for ourselves.