When Did My Hobbies Start Needing an Audience?
I used to write for the joy of it.
Not for a portfolio, not for a feed, not for applause. Just me, a stubby pencil stolen from my fatherās desk, a stack of cheap printer paper, and an afternoon that felt intimate. Iād sit cross-legged on the floor, my hair falling into my face as I wrote poems with no rhyme, and stories with plot holes and pathetic grammar, each signed with a crooked little āPā in the corner, like some great artist.
Nobody saw those pages. They lived in a messy pile in my desk drawer, curling at the edges, forgotten until I rediscovered them years later and smiled at the unselfconsciousness of it all.
Somewhere along the way, that drawer disappeared. Not just the physical one, but the mental space where hobbies could be messy, private, and imperfect.
And so I am left with this question: When did my hobbies start needing an audience?
The Innocence Before the Audience
When I think back to my earliest hobbies, there was no concept ofĀ sharingĀ them. There was a time when I knitted scarves without needing anyone to admire the pattern. When I played the synthesizer in my bedroom and no one needed to hear. When I scribbled poems on napkins, never thinking they should go viral.
I never thought, āWill someone like this?ā I only thought,Ā āI like this.ā
My mother taught me crochet when I was twelve. Weād sit by the window, her hands moving with a speed I couldnāt match. My yarn would knot, my stitches uneven, but the satisfaction was mine alone. She never asked for a picture.
She never said, āYou should post that.ā Sheād just smile and say, āGood. Again.ā And just like that, the craft existed in the moment.
Itās hard to pinpoint when things started to change. Maybe it was my first stage performance, where everyone applauded for my imperfect cacophony of music, or the first time my writing won a national-level competition. Maybe it was when a friend borrowed my notebook, read a story Iād written, and said, āThis is good. You should share it. You would be a great author.ā
It felt flattering at first, like my little, private world was suddenly worthy of an audience. That rush of validation was intoxicating. But it planted a seed.
What if, instead of writing weird, meandering stories about fictional towns, I wrote something ācoolā enough to impress my classmates?
The moment a hobby steps into the light, it changes shape. You start to look at it from the outside, asking:Ā Would anyone else care about this?
Then came the internet, or more specifically, social media.
The platforms changed, but the formula stayed the same: make something, post it, wait for likes, repeat. At first, I told myself it was harmless. I was just āsharing my work.ā But sharing turned into performing. Even reading, my quietest, most private pleasure, became performative. Iād arrange books in aesthetic stacks, take pictures, and review them online.
Hobbies werenāt hobbies anymore. They were content.
Feedback- that was once intimate is now quantified. Likes. Views. Saves. Shares. Metrics that turn joy into judgment.
The algorithm becomes the arbiter of what is worth doing, and over time, we start to experience burnout.
The cost nobody talks about
I donāt think we talk enough about the exhaustion that comes with this shift.
When a hobby becomes part of your public persona, the stakes change. You canāt fail quietly. You canāt experiment without consequences. You start chasing trends in your own creative space, afraid to āwasteā effort on something that wonāt get engagement.
I stopped crocheting for years because my last project hadnāt gotten many likes. I stopped sketching because my style wasnāt āpolishedā enough for Instagram.
Itās absurd when you say it out loud, to abandon something you love because strangers didnāt double-tap it. The invisible audience sits in your head, judging before youāve even begun.
One rainy afternoon last year, I picked up my crochet hook again. No reason. No plan. No camera. Just a ball of yarn and a quiet house.
I made the ugliest scarf youāve ever seen. The tension was off, the edges wobbled, and the color pattern made no sense. And I loved it.
Not because it was good. Not because anyone praised it. But because it reminded me of those afternoons by the window with my mother, of the time before I thought hobbies had to justify themselves to an audience.
I didnāt post a picture. I didnāt even tell anyone Iād made it. The scarf lives in my closet now, lopsided and warm, a reminder that not everything needs to be seen to be real.
Hereās what Iāve learned: the healthiest hobbies are the ones that can exist in the dark.
When you do something purely for yourself, you free it from the weight of expectation. You let it be messy, unrefined, experimental. You permit yourself to fail, and in that failure, you often find the purest form of creativity.
Not every cake needs to be iced for Instagram. Not every poem needs to be published. Not every project needs to be a portfolio piece.
Some things are worth doing simply because they make you feel alive.
How to Reclaim Hobbies in a Performative World
If this resonates, hereās the good news: itās reversible. You can rebuild your relationship with hobbies. Hereās how:
1. Do something and tell no one.
Give yourself permission to create without sharing. Just once. Let the act exist only for you.
2. Create a āno contentā zone.
Pick a time each week to engage in your hobby with no devices nearby. No filming. No capturing. Just doing.
Instead of posting about your hobby, write about how it made you feel. Reconnect with the emotional root of the experience.
4. Notice what feels performative.
Youāll know. The shift in your energy. The sudden self-consciousness. Pause. Ask yourself: Would I still do this if no one knew?
5. Revisit childhood pastimes.
Try something you loved before social media. Coloring books. Building Legos. Collecting stamps. Activities that were never about performance.
Finding balance in a public world
Iām not saying we should never share our work. Sharing can be beautiful. It can build community, inspire others, and create opportunities. But itās dangerous when sharing becomes theĀ onlyĀ point.
Iāve started setting boundaries with my own hobbies. Some I keep completely private. Others I share selectively, when the joy of the work outweighs the pressure of the post. I ask myself before hitting āpublishā:Ā Would I still have done this if nobody else ever saw it?
If the answer is yes, I know itās real. (Just like I published this piece without thinking āwhat if no one reads itā)
So, when did my hobbies start needing an audience? Somewhere between the first compliment and the first follower count. But Iām slowly, stubbornly taking them back.
Iām learning to keep a few things in that invisible drawer, the one where my crooked little āPā used to live underneath the poems on napkins
Because hereās the truth: the best parts of life donāt always belong on display. Some joys are brighter when theyāre just yours.
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