Last weekend our family learned how to silkscreen on fabric, a new skill initiated by a school project my daughter was finishing. It turned out the assignment did not actually require her to silkscreen or sew anything, just turn in a sketch of a fashion design, but she felt that the extra effort would really illustrate her artistic point. We didn’t know that until after she’d already “turned it in”.
So now we all know how to silkscreen. We have silkscreen tools and little bottles of silkscreening stuff. This will be our Silkscreen Summer, where old clothes will be revitalized with color and whimsy. We have a great deal of creative interests, from beading to photography to painting… we’ve made our own gin (the grown-ups), our own salad dressing (the little one) and are working on our DJ sets.
The various items necessary to engage in these pursuits are all tucked away in the “art corner”, which has expanded like dandelions throughout every room of the house. Look, over there is a harp and a telescope… and over that way, a box of air-dry clay and a theremin.
A hobby is defined as what we do in our spare time for fun.
It was an accountant that first called our art a “hobby”, over 20 years ago.
“Is this the primary source of your income?” he asked. No, no it wasn’t. “Are you known for this talent professionally?” No, no I wasn’t. “Well then, according to the U.S. government, this music and art pursuit is officially a “hobby”.
I must have looked somewhat crestfallen, because he added, “You don’t want to make your money like that anyway… if you enjoy it it doesn’t matter. You have health insurance and a 401k, you can’t get that in music most places. You want to have a family someday? Keep your benefits.” He gave me what was supposed to be a reassuring, adult kind of smile.
“You can always do art on the side.”
The phrase “side hustle”, giving alternative pursuits a gritty authenticity, had yet to be invented. Back then, “on the side” was a shallow bowl of peas at a meal, three tablespoons of ranch dressing in a tiny ramekin with your iceberg lettuce wedge, and hobbies took place in basements; grown adults hunched over model airplanes or ham radios. To be a hobbiest meant that you weren’t serious about whatever you were learning, it was all “just for fun”.
I’ve never felt that way about art. Is it fun? Yeah, I guess so, but it’s also work and at least a little bit discipline. I’ve worked as a professional artist, but I believed that to be a true musician meant a noble, simple life like that of a rock and roll monk, sleeping on couches by day and living on stage, beer, and bar nuts at night. Playing guitar in my rent-paid apartment, fully fed with clean socks on all the time was a flagrant display of my lack of true dedication.
Of course now everyone is a hyphenate. You’re a regional account manager? “Well, during the day, but I coach my daughter’s soccer team and we’ve got a little craft beer thing going.” We all expanded our resumes during lockdown, readily admitting that we baked, or wrote stories, or played an instrument… and somehow the lack of outside realities made us realize that in some fashion we were actually bakers, or writers, or musicians. Those identities followed us back into the world of necessity and fiscal responsibility, an expansion of not only what we could do but of who we each were.
Art is not a “hobby”! Goodness! Pearls can’t be clutched fast enough in protest of that opinion. We have worked many long hours in established businesses to self-fund our artistic pursuits, and though we are not free living vagabonds, we fit as much creativity as we can during hours we all should be sleeping or in my case doing some sit-ups.
Saying art is a hobby is like saying love is a hobby. Shocking! Find more pearls!
I am a hobbyist when it comes to magic tricks - I’ve collected many books and have a disturbing amount of playing cards in a large-enough-to-be-worried-about-me sized box under my bed, but I never want to professionally perform magic. That’s a hobby.
I recently completed another piece of the 6 movement ballet I have been working on, in 22 different computer programs, for more than 30 years. It was a sound that I held in my head for over three decades, something I heard clear as day, but could never share with anyone. As a kid, all these tunes were the definition of Impossible; I might learn how to play the guitar but would never stand in front of the London Symphony Orchestra.
But the world changed in ways I didn’t anticipate, and now there are full orchestras inside my computer, and those musical scores that I transferred from paper through generations of notation programs, over and over again, can actually come to life.
That’s not a hobby. That feeling of joy and wonder and accomplishment? It’s mirrored the world over by everyone who pulls a perfect pie out of the oven, or completes the race, or finishes cutting the lawn, everyone who drops their kid off at grade school or at the college dorms, everyone who hits a goal or doesn’t give up on a plan… what we love is every bit as important as what we have to do.
Living should be what we do in our spare time for fun, and your life, no matter what the world tells you, is not a side hustle.
Hobby, or not Hobby?