Your interests are way more precious than you think
Don’t destroy them by making them your “hobbies”
There, I see you waiting in limbo, to make sure your interests even matter. Who cares, right? Not even your family, your partner, your friends, or your colleagues see the point in it. And it’s not even going to pay you! It doesn’t look like it can “change the world” — Since Steve Jobs approved only of that. So, why bother about your interests?
Answer: Yes, bother. You must bother because your interest — hopefully, the genuine kind — is much more important for you and probably the world around you. A lot could depend on whether you follow through with your interest and answer its call. A lot.
Because everything you see around you that you use and admire was built by those who took their interests seriously.
Look around you and reflect on that. Only that.
Wait, does that mean you’re possibly the next big inventor or entrepreneur or renaissance artist? No. Let’s play real. We like real.
What it means is this: Your unique value if it ever comes out to benefit us all, must come through your interests and in the manner it integrates into you and develops you. There’s no other way. No one can feed you that. No one, nothing outside you. And definitely not another medium article.
Then why not hunt your interest? Do you really have something better to do?
If not, then we need to pursue them to the end, actively. Not passively from our “hobby” zone — where interests get relegated to a past-time. No, it needs to become a priority. It needs respect.
We need internal shifts in attitude if we’re to make our interests flourish. How about we start with these:
1. Interests need work. They aren’t gifts or decorations.
Let’s cut to the chase: Just because you’ve found an interest (or many), doesn’t actually mean shit. They’re still seeds when you find them, raw and filled with mere potential, nothing else. Don’t be excited by potential.
Don’t accept them as gifts and put them aside. No! Instead, plant them in your soil, and get to work nourishing them; Make them grow until you can see their real worth. Invest in it, even if no one else sees the need to. That is the work.
That. Is. The. Work.
There’s a way to make interests sustainable in the long run. They can evolve for sure, that’s a great sign, but the scene we want to avoid at all costs is that slow drying up of interests and gumption.
This brings us to the next point. The attitude that makes interest sustainable over the long term.
2. Make interests mature and professional. Kill the ‘hobby’ mentality.
Hobby is idle and shallow, a plain flat leisure. Hobby is convenience, a friday night Netflix special. It’s not serious and barely tests you. Nothing wrong with that, let’s just not mix it with real interests and muddy it. Notice we’re talking about an attitude, and not tasks.
Interests on the other hand need a professional to handle it- without the money of course. It looks for commitment. Are you able to parse off time in its honor, despite your chores and daily mills? Can you make it sacred, a private ceremony? Are you a professional, even in your interests?
How could an interest mature if we don’t be deliberate with it?
Schedule a time that works for you each day/week and work at it for a year.
3. Find an apprenticeship/community. Avoid Isolation.
I remember the first time my interest in music composition took a serious boost. It took a sharp turn from “high school rambling” to “semi-professional” — It was so sharp a change that I could tell you the exact time and day I felt that upgrade and evolution.
It was when I’d started assisting a music composer in the film industry as a part-time job. I was surrounded by musicians, singers, sound engineers and film directors and I felt at home, having gotten closer to the real business so close to my interest. It was rich and I learned stuff in a month over there, that couldn’t have been in five years of isolated pursuit.
Somehow getting closer to your kind of community makes all the difference. Communities and people open doors, not you by yourself huddled in a studio/garage.
If it’s painting you hunger for, then find a good class or teacher around you.
If it’s biking, then find a riding group to go with.
Get out of yourself and find your community. Because they’re the most powerful fuel, to keep you ignited and moving.
4. Don’t look for a lottery behind the interest.
When Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, set out to build Apple’s first computer — out of interest — guess what they were aiming at? Take a few guesses:
Change the world? Nah.
Build a thriving company? Nah.
Make a name for themselves? Nah.
This is what Jobs says, as the real reason to pursue their interest at the time:
“When we started Apple, we were out to build computers for our friends, that was all. No idea of a company.”
That’s it. No expectations, no hoopla, nothing but a committed pursuit of that interest, for its’ own sake.
How could an interest become real, if we look at them for what they can “give” us; as tools for money or impressions.
An interest is an interest — it pulls, we answer. It doesn’t come attached with galas and rewards at all. We follow it because we respond to that mystery and quality, and that’s enough.
It’s an attitude shift that most won’t exercise or maintain for long; one of investing in something for its own end, when 90% of our lives are perpetually drowned in means to other ends — jobs, houses, bills, wealth.
What are we doing during the day/week that is an end in themselves? Not means to acquire something else! But in themselves.
We’re neck-deep in secondary shit when our primary wind slips past us. Don’t let it. Raise your sails and catch your interests.
Bother about them, care for them, make time and commit to them. Be professional towards them, show your seriousness.
Because your interest might be the most real and no-nonsense pathway to a quality life.
And once you have that, you’ll stop looking for answers in medium articles.
