By Gary Smith
I’ve been thinking lately about how everything we do for fun seems to have turned into something we’re supposed to make money from. You can’t scroll through social media without somebody telling you how to turn your hobby into a side hustle, build a brand around it, or use it to generate passive income. If you enjoy woodworking, you ought to be selling your projects on Etsy. If you like playing video games, you should be streaming on Twitch. If you enjoy writing, you need to build an audience, start a newsletter, and figure out how to monetize it. Somewhere along the way, we seem to have forgotten that it’s perfectly fine to do something simply because we enjoy doing it, without worrying about whether there’s a market for it or how much money it might eventually bring in.
Now, I realize there’s a little irony in me writing this on a website that has advertisements, affiliate links, and a little shop where I’m trying to sell coloring books. I’m certainly not opposed to making money from something you enjoy, and I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t love for Titanquisitor to eventually bring in enough money to pay for itself. But the reality is that I’m not making anything worth mentioning from this website right now, and I’ve already spent considerably more money building and maintaining it than I’m likely to ever get back out of it. Between hosting, domains, software, and everything else that goes into keeping this little corner of the Internet running, it would probably make a financial adviser shake his head. But I’m not building Titanquisitor because I think it’s going to make me rich. I’m building it because I enjoy it. I like writing about old movies, video games, professional wrestling, and whatever else happens to catch my interest, and I get a tremendous amount of personal amusement out of creating this ridiculous little universe with its Greek gods, goddesses, comics, and assorted nonsense. If somebody else happens to enjoy it along the way, that’s wonderful, but even if nobody ever visited the site, I’d probably still be sitting here tinkering with it.
And Titanquisitor certainly isn’t my only hobby. I enjoy woodworking, whether that’s building something useful around the house or just putting together a little project because I thought it would be fun to make. I enjoy gardening, growing vegetables and flowers, and seeing what I can manage to get out of a patch of dirt. I still enjoy sitting down with a video game, especially an older one, and spending a few hours playing without feeling like I need to record it, stream it, or turn it into content. None of those things need to produce an income to justify the time I spend doing them. Sometimes the satisfaction of making something with your own hands, growing something from a seed, or finally beating a game you’ve been playing is reward enough. And I think there’s something to be said for having parts of your life that don’t revolve around making money, meeting deadlines, or trying to impress anybody.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with somebody turning a hobby into a successful business, and if you’ve managed to make a living doing something you genuinely love, more power to you. I just hate the idea that every interest we have needs to become another job, because once you start worrying about customers, algorithms, sales figures, and whether something is worth your time financially, there’s a chance that the thing you once did to relax becomes another source of stress. Maybe Titanquisitor will eventually make a little money, and maybe it won’t. Either way, I intend to keep writing, creating, and having fun with it for as long as I enjoy doing so, just like I intend to keep woodworking, gardening, and playing games without trying to turn every spare minute into a business opportunity. Not everything in life needs to have a price tag attached to it, and sometimes doing something for no other reason than because it makes you happy is a perfectly good reason to do it.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to watch some college football and think about how I can monetize my fandom. Or maybe I’ll just crack open a Coke Zero, grab some Andy Capp’s Hot Fries, and enjoy the game.
Making Internet Fun Again!
— Gary Smith
