Why Do We Have Hobbies

from the early 1400s until the 19th century the word hobby was mostly descriptor for pony or small horse but in the wake of the Industrial Revolution the diminutive word had taken on new life as term used to describe recreational activity performed outside of your normal work hours and today whether it's running marathons baking instagram-worthy cakes or collecting rare weird stuff it seems like everybody has productive hobby and they're getting so productive that leisure time is quickly leaking back into our productive hours in the forms of side hustles hobby competitions on the gig economy but why and when did we develop noncompensatory skills outside of our usual nine-to-five aka things we do for fun but not for money but we still work actively at getting better at and did you know that the origin of the hobby as practice stems from the 19th century rise of middle-class culture and efforts by this burgeoning conservative middle class to keep people productive and away from more decadent and frivolous off-the-clock pursuits so let's just skip over the tiny horse part of hobbies history and get right into the way we use it today industrialization across europe and the US in the 18th and 19th centuries brought work largely out of the home or the local sphere and into larger cities and factories as result labor became something that was commodified by hours spent at work which were increasingly sold by poor and working-class laborers to wealthy business owners but although the emergence of more industrial labor brought sharper divide between work life and home life than say agriculture did where folks often lived on the farms where they worked work and leisure weren't as sharply separated as you think in his book hobbyist leisure and the culture of work in America historian Stephen Gelber notes that in the early days hobbies in the u.s. developed as category of socially valued leisure activity in the 19th century because they bridged the world of work and home according to Gelber hobbies brought the values of maximized productivity from the external workplace into the home for women and allowed men who worked outside of the home to create businesslike space he also notes that while hobbies offered relief from the old grindstone they also occupied space tied to productive leisure so instead of coming home to kick off your shoes and eat bunch of snacks before taking nap you are expected to put your hands to use in some fun but also constructive way Gelber states that for the middle-class worker this created process of disguised affirmation where you still feel rewarded and happy for not working / taking it easy but you're also unconsciously mirroring the kind of productivity you experience and are rewarded for at work so you learn to play an instrument or Whittle or knit although if learned to whittle would have zero fingers left but you don't just bang away aimlessly at the keys or hack into piece of wood earn it endless ribbons of material with no aim in sight you started off shaky but over time you build strength behind the skill pushing yourself to play harder music make bigger wood projects or make three sets of baby clothing for your best friend before she gives birth and all of sudden you have workplace level skill that you do for fun but don't get paid for hobbies but hobbies popularity in the 19th century was also divided by class and gender Gelber notes that both working-class and middle-class men could be encouraged to have hobbies because their lives were equally structured outside of the home by the workweek however for the emerging group of middle-class women in the United States in the 19th century hobbies were distinctive pastime that was separate from the kind of work they were expected to do in the home and sign of crafting so instead of sewing in the home to repair your family's worn-out items or threadbare stockings perhaps middle-class woman can now take time to do things like complicated needlework which is pretty but not always attached to practical use and while both men and women who develop hobbies are often interested in perfecting their craft trades and collections it only remains hobby if you are uninterested in profiting from it as your main source of income so you may be able to make world-class wooden canoes but you can't think of selling them as your primary livelihood because then it becomes job so essentially you're Ron Swanson and hobbies could also continue to enforce the ideologies of the workplace on off-the-clock workers because unconsciously enforces stricter code of conduct than if all those nineteenth-century folks were left to their own devices and vices so instead of sleeping all day eating bunch of food getting drunk or gambling you can figure out how to stuff ship into bottle which would honestly drive me to drink because I'm pretty impatient but hobbies can also show sign of conspicuous leisure especially if it's something you share with others for example women abolitionists in the late 1820s and 1830s organized fancy fairs where they could make display and sell their handicrafts for charity and by the 1880s middle-class women had returned to the traditions established by fancy fairs to display intricate needlework by decayed gentlewomen or upper-class ladies without money with the less fancy and more humble work still going to charity donations or fund raising bazaars so when did we make the shift from hobby to hustle because whether you know someone selling their handiwork on Etsy or entering their pastime into competition with cash prize it seems like the hobbies of the past are becoming even less about leisure every day well that brings our timeline lurching forward into the early 20th century in 1908 New England mill implemented weekend in order to accommodate Jewish workers who observe the Sabbath on Saturdays while the workers often made up their hours on Sundays this sometimes offended the Christian majority who considered Sunday their holy day as result the mill gave the workers both days off and other factories and mills began to follow suit and thus the institutionalized weekend was born the part of the calendar not the singer now when the Great Depression sent in by 1929 and continued through the 1930s the weekend suddenly became solution for employers who are looking to shorten the workweek to save money in the face of economic disaster and suddenly all of those handicrafts and hobbies that you learn for fun became bit more essential so people's recreational pursuits like intense baking building sewing crafting pickling vegetables started making ends meet between uncertain paychecks in that way the hobby actually served as ample preparation for economic downturns because they already functioned as pseudo work and in the mid 20th century hobbies actually turned into big business for stores that catered to hobbyists think train building kits specialty albums to store all of your rare baseball cards in and magazines full of sewing patterns so the connection between structure leisure and the workplace grew even stronger since some folks made their livings selling hobbies and the persistent idea of hobbies as form of self sustenance continued even after the Depression and into the 1950s and 1960s but after the latter half of the 20th century hobbies took on slight bite to become more competitive eliminating the illusion of leisure almost all together now we all probably see million posts from our friends who used to be casual joggers but now regularly compete in half marathons or person who you've glean like to bake who now has tens of thousands of social media followers admiring their artful geometric pies mean even people who started off vlogging for fun on YouTube are quickly finding ways to cash in on their formerly recreational pursuits think about ninja who's been recently making headlines for revealing that he makes five hundred thousand dollars month from playing fortnight and streaming it on twitch and YouTube and according to an article in The Guardian by Richard Godwin this desire to turn hobby into hustle could stem from couple of impulses the first is that were often presented with the fabled hobbies of the super wealthy and successful people we aim to emulate so if we hear that notable CEO runs eight marathons year and made billion dollars we automatically connect this no days off attitude with her thirst for success the second is desire to find meaning and purpose in our lives through increased human perfectionism so it's not just okay to make kind of miss shape and ugly cookies that taste great and everyone in your family enjoys suddenly you're ugly butter face cookies are out and you're watching two hours of YouTube tutorials trying to figure out how to do mirror glaze on four-year-old's birthday cake and the last reason is that we now have the tools and technology to quantify our progress in various hobbies which brings out the iron person in all of us so your SmartWatch can track the number of steps you take how many squats you took and your resting heart rate you can make blogs and videos about your progress in video game or keep public Instagram tracking your evolution as jean jacket bedazzler and the ability to track makes the progress you make feel more concrete and satisfying especially since you can compare it with others so the 21st three hobby is marked by technology tracking progress and innate competition as people look to improve and also to find meaning in their lives outside of their nine-to-five so what do you think anything to add - how hobbies have always been tied to work have any links or social media handles to site tracking the progress of your own personal passion that you want to share with your fellow edge knots and me drop all of that info down below so can creep around on your cool pages and if you like origin of everything be sure to subscribe here on YouTube follow us on Facebook and give us chance on Instagram and Twitter that's it for this episode and I'll see you guys here next time