During the pandemic, I had no quarantine hobbies. I didn't bake a single sourdough. I haven't fostered a dog. I didn't tie-dye a single sweatsuit. I completed no puzzles.
I did, however, exceed my professional goals by expanding relationships, diversifying and elevating my portfolio, and surpassing my ambitious revenue target in my first full year as a freelance writer. I’m privileged to be able to work remotely and in the endless stretch of blurred-together days spent homeschooling twins and generally fretting, throwing myself into work has been the nucleus of my routine and my sense of purpose.
But recently, an innocent-seeming Facebook post in a writers group that I belong to forced me to confront a question that rattled me: Outside of work, what are your pandemic hobbies? That’s when I realized that, while I'm professionally fulfilled and my kids remain fed and occasionally bathed, I have done nothing measurable by the highly visible social media barometer of pandemic creative output. No needlepoint, no origami, no marzipan.
Immediately, I judged myself for this perceived failing that’s been hiding in plain sight all along: I have no hobbies.
I’m a devoted wife, mom, daughter, sister, and friend. And I’m devoted to my business, which I am proud to have built from zero after a painful layoff that radically shook my sense of self. But can a person really be well-rounded and self-actualized without personal hobbies? In an age when ambitious creative projects and other supposedly worthy pastimes fill our feeds, it seems an unavoidable question.
For answers, I turned to a pro. Leah Rockwell is a licensed professional counselor and founder Rockwell Wellness Counseling. "For many of us who operate from an existential place — as in, what brings true meaning to my life, where does my purpose for being here lie — the pandemic provided us an immense opportunity to finally pause and take stock of what in our lives truly feeds us,” she says. “A lot of the noise has fallen away, clarifying what we hold closest to us. If you have found that work is what centers you and gives your life purpose, good for you for tuning into that and listening.”
Rockwell explains that most of us fall into two camps. For some, work provides what we need on a rather basic level (think Maslow's hierarchy of needs) through the income we earn. “We make peace with that,” she says of this group’s thinking. “We stay in jobs that may be less fulfilling, but the income they provide allows for us to see those hours of the day as what supports other areas of our life, such as income for nice vacations and special items.”
The second group is filled with people like me — especially now that I work for myself — who “simply need to be working within a calling or something more, and we happen to find a way to do that and get paid for it,” she says. “It's rare and it's beautiful when those two things coalesce.”
I interpret Rockwell’s comments as descriptive of a set of professionals who provide pro bono legal aid to immigrant families in border camps, or race to bring life-saving vaccines to market, or otherwise devote themselves to obviously mission-driven pursuits. I admire these people. But as a writer covering such topics as travel, relationships, and events, I couldn’t pretend to count myself among their ranks.
So why do people like me care so much about what we do? For one thing, of course, we have bills to pay. My work pays for the food on our family’s table, even more now that the pandemic dramatically impacted my husband’s work in the live event industry.
For another, my identity as a writer and creative person is bound up in my work. I am a better parent when I reserve time and attention for myself; the balance imparts patience and a freshness that elevates the quality of the time I spend with my kids.
But there must be more behind why I’ve found myself focusing so much on work during this period of isolation. With no commute and and zero social commitments or travel plans, I could very well have carved out some time to explore a new hobby.
For insight, I asked travel writer and photographer Jacqueline Kehoe, who posed the original question in the writers group she founded, what motivated the post.
“I am 100% achievement-oriented to a fault,” she told me. “It's gotten to the point where my relationships have suffered for it. Millennial burnout? Workaholism? I sometimes feel like a statistic.”
Having relocated to a new city just before the pandemic, she has few friends where she now lives, and her whole life happens within the “1,000-square-foot box” she calls home. “Work has been my only saving grace,” she says. “It keeps life from being an empty shell; it keeps me creative and, on good days, proud. It also owns me. On bad days, in unhealthy ways.”
Patrice Grell Yursik, the creator of award-winning beauty blog Afrobella, expressed similar resistance to Kehoe’s question as I did. (She responded: “Outside of work? Where’s that?”) But for her, unlike for me, it didn’t trigger a mini existential crisis.
“I usually feel fine about it until I see someone I know pick up a guitar, or make a dope roller skating video, or share their cool crochet project. And then I’m like, ‘Oh yeah. I’ve been saying I want to learn how to do those things, without making any kind of real effort.”
Instead, she puts that real effort into projects that can be monetized. When she feels a genuine pull toward something, she instinctively moves to turn it into work. During the pandemic, she and her husband launched HomeCookingCouple, born from their passion for food. “I make my passion projects into work," she says. “There’s a combination of pride but also a realization that I don’t have a hobby I haven’t tried to monetize.”
Kehoe says she’s also “fallen victim” to the mindset that monetizing hobbies validates them both personally and culturally — but she sees that as a good thing, at least in part. “For me, turning creative hobbies into work is the dream, but I also know that's BS. In our culture, anything monetized feels more worthy. I wish that weren't true.”
Yursik underscores the practical importance of earning as much as possible within her control as a creative entrepreneur. “My passionate attention to work is fueled by the desire to not just pay bills, but to build the life I’m working towards. Will I want to work less once I’ve achieved my personal goals? I'd like to think so.”
It sounds logical — even appealing — to work toward a lifestyle goal and pull back on work when you reach it. But if I’m being honest, I’m not sure Yursik’s statement is entirely true for me. Fortunately, Rockwell thinks that’s perfectly OK.
“This is an absolute triumph, not a failure,” she says. “If work is what elicits that magnetic attraction, that's a win. No one else gets a say in what makes you feel the most you.”
Further, she explains that a well-rounded life has little to do with either work or hobbies: In the final analysis, you’re not likely to think of either as your raison d’etre. Think of the notion of deathbed regrets, which people crystalize and reveal in their final moments.
These regrets, she says, are “largely related to wishing they had spent more time with people, rather than working. Rare is the person who wishes she had taken up knitting rather than hanging with a trusted friend.”
She adds, “If work or other areas of your life are still allowing you time with friends and loved ones, there's no reason to doubt your well-roundedness and self-actualizing growth."
And since I’ve had no scarcity of time with my loved ones under this roof during nearly a year of mostly unbroken home quarantine — and since my work actually improves the quality of that time — it would seem I’m doing OK.
Alesandra Dubin is a Los Angeles-based lifestyle writer. Follow her on Instagram at @alicedubin.
