job envy, or, hobbies as hobbies

My dear little blueberries, do you ever have a hard time accepting your hobbies as hobbies? Do you ever start taking  silks lessons and think, "This is my calling! Circus performer, how did I not see it!?" Or buy a DSLR and fancy yourself a photographer?

Am I asking rhetorical questions because I still don't know how to start a blog post?

...

...Yes.



It's the enticing call of the creative life. Taking pictures as a hobby seems so lame in comparison to being able to sip your wine nonchalantly say, "Oh. I'm a photographer," when you meet all those interesting, worldly people at all those interesting, worldly parties you go to. Professors of microbiology and Victorian literature would stare at you, mouths agape in wonder at your amazing awesomeness. Then you get to comment in tra-la-la tones about trotting home early because you've been hired to shoot a wedding in Bora Bora tomorrow.

Then you remember that the thought of running a business is terrifying the way that a shark attack is terrifying. Just like gettin' nibbled on a little bit.

I'm focusing on photography in this post because I do enjoy it and I know several people who have built successful photography businesses. One of them particularly, Shaina Sheaff, has made amazing professional and creative strides just in the past two years. I see her work and feel absolutely unaccomplished in comparison. She also happens to be my cousin, so it's like, we share the same genes. But she's flying to Virginia to create beautiful photographs and I'm wondering if I should get Mediterranean or Italian for lunch.

So, how do we accept that our hobbies are way more interesting than our actual jobs?

I think that it helps to remember that we have hobbies because we need them to keep us sane. After all, even photographers and circus performers have hobbies. Because no matter how creative or interesting a job is, it's still your way of supporting yourself, which comes with all sorts of pressure and stress. I guess there's a reason that people spend so much time engaging in such objectively useless activities as model ship building, uni-cycling, and bird watching.

Dear god, people, there is reason that ComicCons exist!

It's because with all of our higher brain functions and up-right-walking-ness, we absolutely need to do things JUST FOR THE HELL OF IT. Because our brains are big and we have thumbs, and we CAN, damn it!

So build that model train and don the ewok costume.

Go on with your bad self.