The Hobbies I Lied About Loving for Years — And What I Actually Like Now That I'm Being Honest

The Hobby Résumé I Built for No One

At some point in my late twenties, I became a person with hobbies. Not real hobbies, mind you — curated ones. The kind that photograph well and sound impressive at dinner parties. I hiked. I painted. I baked bread with a starter I named Gerald. I had a journaling practice. I was thriving, apparently.

Except I wasn't. I was performing.

Every Sunday hike felt like homework. Every time I cracked open my sketchbook, I'd spend twenty minutes staring at it before checking my phone. Gerald the sourdough starter died three times and I kept reviving him out of sheer stubbornness, not love. And the journal? Mostly grocery lists and half-formed complaints that I never finished writing because I didn't actually want to be journaling — I wanted to feel like the kind of person who journals.

There's a difference. A big one. And it took me way too long to figure that out.

When Did Leisure Become a Performance?

I think it started with Instagram, honestly. Or maybe it started before that, with the cultural obsession around self-improvement and intentional living. Either way, somewhere along the line, hobbies stopped being things you did for fun and started being things you did for an audience — even if that audience was just the imaginary version of yourself you were trying to become.

The pressure to monetize didn't help. If you paint, people ask if you're selling your work. If you bake, they want to know if you've thought about an Etsy shop. If you're good at something — or even just decent at it — the American instinct is to turn it into a side hustle. And once money enters the picture, suddenly your relaxation has a performance review.

I watched friends burn out on things they genuinely loved because they started treating those things like jobs. A woman I know used to knit because it calmed her anxiety. Then she opened an Etsy shop, got popular, and now knitting is the thing that causes her anxiety. That's not a hobby anymore. That's just unpaid overtime with better branding.

The Moment I Admitted It Out Loud

The crack in my carefully constructed hobby identity happened on a trail in the Appalachians. I was forty-five minutes in, sweating through my shirt, and I had a thought so honest it almost knocked me off the path: I genuinely do not want to be here right now.

Not in a dramatic, existential way. Just in the plain, simple way that you don't want to be somewhere when you'd rather be somewhere else. I didn't want to hike. I never really wanted to hike. I wanted to want to hike, because hikers seem like grounded, healthy, outdoorsy people and I wanted to be that.

I turned around and went home. And instead of feeling guilty, I felt weirdly relieved.

That relief was the clue. Real enjoyment doesn't feel like relief when it stops — it feels like disappointment. I wasn't disappointed the hike ended early. I was free.

The Uncomfortable Audit

After that trail moment, I started doing something uncomfortable: actually paying attention to how I felt during the activities I claimed to love. Not how I felt posting about them. Not how I felt telling someone about my weekend. How I felt while doing them.

The results were not flattering.

Hiking: dread before, relief after. Watercolor: frustration 80% of the time, occasional satisfaction. Sourdough: genuinely hated it, was doing it entirely for the aesthetic. Journaling: liked it for about four days in January, then obligation.

And then I looked at the stuff I actually did all the time, without being prompted, without posting about it:

I rearranged furniture constantly. I spent hours reading Wikipedia rabbit holes about obscure historical events. I rewatched the same TV shows I already knew I loved instead of starting new ones. I cooked elaborate meals on weeknights for no reason. I made playlists obsessively and never shared them with anyone.

None of that looked good on Instagram. None of it had a community around it. Nobody was going to ask me if I'd considered monetizing my Wikipedia habit. But I did all of it freely, without resistance, without checking the clock.

That was the actual list. That was what I loved.

Why It's So Hard to Just Like What You Like

There's something almost embarrassing about admitting your hobbies aren't impressive. We live in a culture that treats your free time as a reflection of your character. Hiking means you're disciplined and nature-connected. Painting means you're creative and soulful. What does rewatching The Office for the fifth time and deep-diving into the history of the Byzantine Empire mean?

Probably that I'm just a person. A regular, unbranded, un-optimized person who likes what they like.

The letting go of the curated version was genuinely uncomfortable. I had to grieve a little — not the hobbies themselves, but the identity I'd built around them. The version of me who was the hiker, the baker, the artist. She was a good character. I liked her. She just wasn't real.

What Came After the Honesty

Here's the part nobody tells you about dropping the performance: it gets quieter, and the quiet is actually nice.

I stopped buying gear for activities I didn't enjoy. I stopped signing up for classes in things I thought I should be into. I let Gerald the sourdough starter die his final, permanent death. I deleted half the apps I'd downloaded to support hobbies I was only pretending to have.

And I started doing the things I actually like, unabashedly, without justifying them to anyone — including myself.

I cook complicated things on Tuesdays. I make playlists. I read Wikipedia for two hours on a Saturday morning and feel genuinely good about it. I rearranged my living room three times in one month and every single time it felt like a small creative win.

None of it photographs well. Most of it isn't worth mentioning at a dinner party. But all of it is real, and real, it turns out, is a lot more sustainable than impressive.

The Permission Slip You Didn't Know You Needed

If you've been dragging yourself through hobbies that feel more like obligations than escapes, I want to tell you something directly: you're allowed to stop. You're allowed to admit that the thing you spent three years saying you loved actually kind of bores you. You're allowed to like weird, unmonetizable, un-Instagrammable things. You're allowed to do nothing impressive with your free time.

Leisure is supposed to restore you. The moment it starts depleting you, it's not leisure anymore — it's just another thing on the list.

Drop the list. Figure out what actually fills you up. It might surprise you. It might be embarrassingly simple. It might be something you've been doing quietly all along, without ever thinking to call it a hobby.

That's probably the one worth keeping.