I’ve heard this before, but haven’t found it the case personally. I started work in manual jobs and messing around with computers was my evening hobby. Many years later, I now do IT as a job (partly from gaining skills from that hobby) but also have continued it as my primary thing to do when I’m not working. I was worried when I changed into this career that my hobby would become too much like work to be enjoyable, but I’ve not found that.
Is this the same for other people, or am I unusual in doing something in my off hours that’s so close to my career? I’m genuinely curious to know if others have found the same or whether they found another hobby.
Sometimes it’s not the fact that you make your passion your job, that kills the spark. It can be a series of very unfortunate events happening in quick succession that dims what makes life so much fun.
For me it was a culmination of changes at my job that saddled me with too much work and the fact that several people in my personal life went through big crises all within the same period of time.
I worked close to a 100 hours a week with barely any breaks. No downtime, no weekends. No vacations. What little time I did have was spent being a therapist or mediator for people in my life who were very unhappy.
I was given promises at work that kept my spirits up, but when it was time for them to be kept, I was let down. Not only that, within the same week we lost all our clients due to budget cuts because inflation kicked everybody’s asses.
And then I snapped. I’m lucky I have an amazing and caring boyfriend because that shit could have developed into a serious mental health crisis. It had just been a full year of trying to stay positive and being let down over and over and over and over while everybody I cared about were suffering.
Things kept being fucked for another year, but it felt less extreme because the workload was more normal by then, but also because we made a lot of good changes at home. We moved into a place that was better for us. That helped a lot.
I’m still not doing my passions at home despite having set up an entire room for it. I know it will come back at some point. When I’m ready. I try to treat my creativity like it’s a wild animal. You have to let it come to you and you can’t chase it.
I think I will be like you again sometime soon. I used to be until 2024, when it all happened. I have also gone through much worse crises before this one where my passion went away for a while. This too shall pass, as they say.
That sounds pretty grim and I’m sorry it happened to you. Having to be strong for other people is damned tiring.
I’m no psychologist, but that sounds a lot like depression and if so, would explain why there’s little passion to be found at such a time. Certainly when I’ve had periods of clinical depression, life was pretty damned bleak for a while. As you say, you can’t chase happiness or force it to happen. Anti depressants helped me, but I found that they certainly didn’t encourage passion or enjoyment in anything as they takes away the highs as well as the lows.
Sounds like you’ve got a good partner and that’s half the battle. I hope things improve for you soon.
Thank you for your kind words, my friend 🤗
You’re definitely right that I was depressed at some point. There are months of 2024 that I don’t have any recollection of. Those months scared my boyfriend more than after I snapped and I was full of negative emotions. At least by then, I was present and feeling things. During the blackout months I just sat in the same corner and stared into space when I didn’t work or sleep. Almost like I was a tool that was left in a corner when it wasn’t being used.
I’m very lucky I have my boyfriend. You’re completely correct that he’s a good partner. He is fantastic and one of the best human beings I have ever known.
I do think I’m better nowadays. We moved to a bigger and better place recently and it’s so nice to finally have a home and not just be in some temporary location while life tosses you around. I think that within the next year or so, I’ll be back to myself and be more creative again. It’s already happening a little bit even though I still don’t have any energy to enjoy my passion. I feel inspired and that’s a massive step compared to where I was only a few months ago.
I’m also sorry to hear that you have struggled with depression, my friend. And a bad case by the sounds of it. And your description of anti depressants is very relatable. I was on some of those way back in my youth when I was struggling way more than I am now, so I know how much they can just iron you out for better and for worse. I hope you have good people in your life too, who have your back. I’m also genuinely happy to read about how passionate you are about your job/hobby. That’s the kind of life I wish every person was blessed enough to get to experience, because man, when things are good, it’s just the most enjoyable and fulfilling way to live. ❤️ I wish you nothing but the best!
My husband is a chef.
My husband cooked two meals for me in our first year dating(I will never forget him making steak for me in his boxers at midnight, never, absolutely amazing). He’s not cooked for me since. I am okay with this arrangement. Sometimes, he cant even be in the kitchen when Im doing prep lol I totally get it.
I do feel some sorrow, as I see it in him too, his loss of love for cooking.
That’s sad to hear.
Can he not be in the kitchen due to work trauma or because you arent doing it like in the kitchen and he feels like it’s a wrong workflow?
naw, he just has worked in kitchens for over 15 years. If he watches me prep, it just reminds him of work.
Understandable.
I just imagine the possible reasons for why
Does your prep annoy him so much because it could be done in X ways faster and with less work but he doesnt want to steal your joy in food prep
or
You remind him in how you work of his trainees and essentially stays quiet to keep the peace at homeEither way, the internet stranger wishes you a good week :)
not at all for either of those.
Im trained… I was trained before I even met him. Im offended you think my knife skills are shit tbh. I don’t work in a kitchen anymore, but I have so, idk. Dont assume? It’s just like a car mechanic doesnt want to come home and work on cars. He don’t wanna come home and cook. Maybe seeing my joy in the kitchen makes him sad. But, like, dont diss my skill, you dont know me.
Same with IT, also been a fan of technology and computers and its nice when I get to use those skills/passions at work.
Just wish I didn’t hate the company I worked for and didn’t have to go into an office to do it. (Considering I did the same job WFH for 4 years until they forced us back)
I feel you. I’m much more productive working from home with fewer distractions, but I’m a little luckier in that I get to split that time.
Always, yes, but thankfully I have a very wide scope.
- When I do networking at work, I enjoy programming and infra at home.
- When I do programming at work, I enjoy networking and infra at home.
- When I do infra at work, I enjoy programming and networking at home.
I’ve done martial arts for 30 years.
I’ve taught for 20. Owned for 11 of those.
Honestly, it was all great until Covid. I love teaching, I’ve been lucky enough to have some great athletes and competitors.
But parents suck. 90 minutes of karate and kickboxing a week are not going to fix your little twat waffle. Stop being a friend and discipline your children.
DevOps here. I still really like programming and systems administration, but I’m so burnt out I can’t do anything anymore after 8h+ of work. It has gotten to the point that I hate computers so much, I favor going out into nature over fixing my broken Linux install of my desktop for several months now. I’d love to write software again but my brain can’t do it.
I credit SRE with starting my hiking hobby. Never liked being in nature until I was forced to sit in front of a computer screen for 40-60 hours a week and some weekends.
Now I’ve been to a dozen national parks, about as much state parks and one of the few joys I get is planning the next outing.
Thanks for your experience. I’ve certainly felt like that at times, and some nights definitely don’t want to do it - so then I turn to other hobbies that aren’t related, but I keep coming back to it.
This is 100% me as a SWE. I loved working on my own projects as a teen. Now I’m weary and my love for it has been displaced by rage and frustration lol. Last thing I’d think of doing after work.
Depends on the task.
Yes and no.Definitely somewhat, but not so much “diminished my enjoyment” as “prevents me from doing as a hobby”.
Programmer here, and I find that working on these types of problems just wears out that “part” of my brain. It becomes not fun to force myself to focus on those things as a hobby anymore, despite that being how I got into programming. I don’t resent it though, I actually really enjoy doing it as my job. And shake it up a little, and I’ll hugely enjoy something like programming systems in Factorio, but any ambitions I have of say, making a game, aren’t happening until I retire or change careers.
I can understand that. I’ve always coded for fun (Basic, Turbo C, lots of psuedo languages, then perl, sql, php, python and so on) - learning that stuff is hard for me but very rewarding when I do. I actually find it harder to learn stuff at work, but it’s great to do at work too. I transfer skills between the two schools - and each has enough variation that whilst there’s technical and skill crossover, the headspace is very different - at least for me. But yes, if I’ve been doing that all day, I’ll do something else in the evening. I restored a car as a distraction from work once, but that was when I was in a job that I really hated.
High five for factorio mention. Incredible game, although I’m playing more Captain of Industry lately. Different but similar brain scratching.
I love IT and cybersecurity and I’ve worked in it for years and it has not diminished my love for the hobby. It did make me realize that I hate working in it because it does not actually contain a lot of the things I enjoy and it mostly has corporate BS.
I was really passionate about math for years, and I spent most of my free time on it. When I got to grad school and I had to do it to survive my passion dried up. I think it became harder to have fun when I knew I wouldn’t be free to put a project down if I wanted to, and when math stopped being fun I stopped being good at it.
I passed all my coursework and exams but I burned out before finishing my dissertation and dropped out seven years into my phd program. It’s six years later and I still barely touch it. I passed qualifying exams in algebraic topology and today if you asked me to compute a homology group I’d be clueless.
I’m not going to discount that monetizing your passions works for some people, but the experience of finding out you’re not one of those people is soul-crushing.
Oh, that sounds brutal. Sorry.
Programmer turned photographer turned back to programmer.
I was really enjoying the online photography scene the 2000s and early 2010s. I used to do street photography, ask interesting people to take their portrait, blag a press pass and take photos of up and coming bands (“sure why not” is a crazy answer to “can I inexpertly point my flash directly at Florence Welch as she performs her last tiny gig before stardom”).
I started doing work for wannabe models (ModelMayhem mostly) and from that got requests to do paid personal events, eg weddings and engagements. Especially when I moved abroad to places where I was basically self employed, this was a nice little occasional gig. But it was work. Regardless of why they chose me, they wanted their photos to look the current fashionable way, they wanted them by a certain date, they wanted specific moments and they wanted them perfect even if they weren’t perfect in real life. It sucked all the fun and creativity from it.
Coupled with the overloading of the internet with (elitist snob coming) mundane and repetitive photography content and the death of discussion and appreciation of thoughtful photography, it eroded my love for it on both ends.
I’m old and have kids now, I’m trying to get back into it. It’s hard to build back up that courage to take out a camera and snap a photo. Before it marked you as unusual, but at least as potentially an expert or artist. There was a percentage of people willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. It seems these days that like many “democratised” things, putting extra effort into something seems to be heavily discouraged and denigrated as elitist. And I think just in general a 40-something with a camera does not get the benefit of the doubt that a 20-something used to. I’m hoping it swings around again as I hit proper old age, just a harmless old weirdo with a DSLR.
Interesting, thanks for sharing.
My father was also an amateur photographer who went professional - doing lots of weddings and events. He got quite frustrated with that too, even though this was back in the 70s. Even then, the customer usually had a strong view about what they wanted, which gave him little leeway to be creative - much as you describe. He also found getting paid at the end of the job really difficult, so much so the combination forced him to give it up, and that pretty much killed his love too. Sold most of his cameras and lenses and all his darkroom equipment.
Not really. It means I have access to devices and tools I simply could not afford as a hobbyist. It means I can go to trade fairs and seminars paid for by my boss. It means I can get materials for my hobby at large customer discount prices.
I got into computing early on (high school Fortran programming on punch cards, lol) and really loved it, more so when we switched to BASIC the second year. I decided to pursue that as my career as well and really enjoyed it until retirement. What I think took some fun out of it was my dealings with corporate structure. I think the thing to remember is the seperation between that thing you love and the system that you have to work within to achieve success.
God, you must be even older than I am! We did Basic at school, and our teacher showed us punch cards, and tape, but we never actually used them - BBC B’s being the tool of that time. Those were great times - genuinely pushing the boundaries of the possible, spending hours hand optimising code to save a few bytes or cycles, all with only printed manuals as reference. Understood about corporate structure, and for me also, some individuals can really affect the subject (I detest rudeness in particular)
I really loved programming back then too. And don’t forget arrogance and self promotion (though maybe covered under rude).
You only have to work within a system for success within that system. Alternatives are just waiting for your participation. A better world is possible.
Back when I started it was the norm to get a job with whoever would hire you so that you get the experience to grow and improve your lot in life. I was in a field where if I wanted to move I could get a new job right away. This led to the enviable position to work in a number of different industries, which taught me so much about business and industry. Along the way I worked for some great people but ultimately I would encounter some pretty questionable practices/points of view that were discouraging. As much as I’m sure today’s world is a much different experience, the ability to collaborate with strangers I think is a game changer. My brain doesn’t function well enough now to survive in this environment but I agree that this can lead to positive change. One caveat is that it allows both good and bad actors to excel.
How long have you been doing it? I went from science to IT and for 10 or 15 years it was still fun as a hobby but I have been doing it for 25 years and in the last 10 I generally want to have things that work without to much fuss for my personal time.
That could be a valid point and I certainly appreciate the value in a clear separation. It’s been my hobby since 1981 when I got my first computer, and aside from a poor six months working in a support job in the 90s, it’s only been my main career for 7 or 8 years. My colleagues are a mixture of those who like to selfhost and fiddle in their spare time too, and those who actively avoid technology.
Im curious if the ones who avoid have been doing it a long time vs the ones who self host. I don’t feel I avoid technology but I do avoid a lot of enshitified stuff like I don’t like smart phones and I prefer to spend my free time in nature and away from technology. I mean I do use a linux laptop now and most all programs I use are open source but like because I like stuff to just work I use an out of the box distro although I may change to bazzite but more for the image base than gaming per se.
Absolutely yes.
I’ve dreamt of making movies and theater plays. I got into internships after finishing school and it was going good, I just started hating it. I hated movies, I couldn’t see them without thinking of all the misery behind the scenes. I hated TV. I hated theater.
I stopped after a year and went to university. It ruined something else for me, but at least, after a while, I was able to enjoy movies again.
That’s really interesting, and sad to lose an interest for a while. Do you remember what triggered the shift to hating it? Movies themselves, or the internship and environment of that, so closely associated with the subject?
