Basically if it's a hobby you can say "fuck it, i don't feel like it today" and if it's a business... nope.
Turning my hobby into a business made me hate it
151–160 of 193 posts
Re: Turning my hobby into a business made me hate it
#152While I somewhat agree with the premise of this post, I think it is exacerbated by the fact that the author was trying to turn something like fiction writing into a business. When I think of businesses that suck in terms of economics and chances of success, fiction writing is one of the first things that come to mind. In general, you like things more when they make you a lot of money. A lot of fun things suck when yo…
But the author did make money?! So I’m not sure your final paragraph really represents an appropriate response. The author made money, but they were unhappy because they weren’t doing something they enjoyed.
Re: Turning my hobby into a business made me hate it
#153In this case, the author chose to Self-Publish the book (amazon), and so they'd have to do their own Marketing, Networking, Editing, on-top of writing (the fun, creative part). If they'd had a Literary Agent, it may have worked out - Agent does the heavy-lifting i.e non-writing tasks.
The writing business (books) is extremely competitive - keep a main job, write on the side (hobby) until sales / Agent / Publisher pays enough for you focus on writing full-time.
Stephen King, "On Writing" covers this well, and it's a joy to read.
Re: Turning my hobby into a business made me hate it
#154While I somewhat agree with the premise of this post, I think it is exacerbated by the fact that the author was trying to turn something like fiction writing into a business. When I think of businesses that suck in terms of economics and chances of success, fiction writing is one of the first things that come to mind. In general, you like things more when they make you a lot of money. A lot of fun things suck when yo…
But the author did make money?! So I’m not sure your final paragraph really represents an appropriate response. The author made money, but they were unhappy because they weren’t doing something they enjoyed.
> And yet, in spite of my passionate “passion”, I never made enough money to quit the day job.
Re: Turning my hobby into a business made me hate it
#155Am I the only one who detests the term 'creative' as a noun? It seems to have come into being in the last few years and I just hate it. It feels like if you're not a creative then you're not creative. We're all creative in some way, so calling yourself 'a creative' is just daft.
I'm also not a much fan of 'creative' as a noun for much of the same reasons. I feel this way about how we commonly use 'talent' to mean - "They are magically gifted in ways that are innate", as if they rolled 18's in all their stats, and not "This person has achieved a level of skill that is remarkable."
> about how we commonly use 'talent'
I think the Anders Ericsson “10,000 hour” theoreticians would agree with you. And yet there are studies that point to a smaller effect of practice than Ericsson proposed. (Rather, practice may explain a smaller amount of the difference between cohorts that are divided by some measure of ability.) Very likely it’s a nature _and_ nurture phenomenon, particularly at the highest levels of certain fields of pursuit.
Re: Turning my hobby into a business made me hate it
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm also not a much fan of 'creative' as a noun for much of the same reasons. I feel this way about how we commonly use 'talent' to mean - "They are magically gifted in ways that are innate", as if they rolled 18's in all their stats, and not "This person has achieved a level of skill that is remarkable."
> about how we commonly use 'talent' I think the Anders Ericsson “10,000 hour” theoreticians would agree with you. And yet there are studies that point to a smaller effect of practice than Ericsson proposed. (Rather, practice may explain a smaller amount of the difference between cohorts that are divided by some measure of ability.) Very likely it’s a nature _and_ nurture phenomenon, particularly at the highest level…
Sure, while I'm skeptical I'm not going to act like there isn't some unknown secret sauce that bends a person's abilities in a direction. But as far as I know, there is no baby that has ever been known to pick up a paint brush and give us the Mona Lisa. I think when we start the "Talented" conversation with the premise being, "if they rolled different stats at birth, they wouldn't be capable of this ability" we're flattening a lifetime of not only focus on a craft (10k) but their home life, did they have community, did they have supportive people in their life, proper nutrition, socioeconomic status, the technology at the time (I mean, more skilled peoples exist today than have probably ever existed), the education they were able to receive, were they born standard, etc etc.
If talent was decided in a way where talking about 'something innate', as in we could go so far as to say... 30%? 40% 50% nature accounts for aptitude.. wouldn't we actually have reason for a caste system? Is it specific - This person is wired to code - what does that even mean? There are so many skills and subskills.
I'm sure it exists, its just funny/frustrating that the word is used to describe what appears to me as the minority factor instead of the majority.
Re: Turning my hobby into a business made me hate it
#157I read a comment on hacker news that I cannot find now, but it resonated deeply with me. Don't try to answer the question "what do you want to be?", answer the question "what do you want to do?" I answered the wrong question, I said "I want to be a musician". And what I did was teach music I didn't care for, perform music I didn't care for, work for people and gigs I didn't care for, made a salary I didn't care for.…
The issue is that that “main gig” dominates your time. I get up early in the morning to commute to work. I spend 8 hours at work doing what main gig requires. I commute home. If I’m super lucky, as well has having no family or social obligations, and I don’t do any cleaning or chores, I get 3-5 hours to both relax and work on side gigs. Then I’m getting ready for bed or doing one of the other things I have to do to sustain life.
While the person working the other gig full time, while they do a lot of stuff they don’t want to do, all that stuff is in the same vein as the stuff they want to do, and practice like that has value. Maybe you’re not playing beach’s lute suites, but the playing/performing/writing/networking you’re doing has more value to that thing than being a programmer.
It’s not straightforward which one is better if you really want to take the side gig forward and advance.
Re: Turning my hobby into a business made me hate it
#158I read a comment on hacker news that I cannot find now, but it resonated deeply with me. Don't try to answer the question "what do you want to be?", answer the question "what do you want to do?" I answered the wrong question, I said "I want to be a musician". And what I did was teach music I didn't care for, perform music I didn't care for, work for people and gigs I didn't care for, made a salary I didn't care for.…
I had a coach recently frame this as "what impact do you want to have?" and relatedly, "how big an impact do you think you can have?" In your case the impact might be something like "to inspire others who hear the music I play". Or it might simply be "to increase my own wellbeing by taking joy through playing." After all, there must be some underlying reason why music is important to you. So this framing can help une…
What impact do you want to have?
“It depends on how many floors up I jumped from really”
Re: Turning my hobby into a business made me hate it
#159I think writing is a very unique area, so the lesson here may not be generally applicable. Writing fiction is incredibly time consuming, and there’s no where at all to hide - there your work product is, for all to see.
Plus, you can’t scale it with help. Sure, there are editors and some people collaborate, but pretty much it is all on the author to produce.
Other businesses you can hire people to take some of the load off.
Re: Turning my hobby into a business made me hate it
#160That person didn't turn their hobby into a business, they turned their hobby into a cheap hustle.
I like that they sort of get that as a revelation towards the end of the post, but they let it go way out of hands, enough to ruin it.