what does a hobby actually look like?

Long time no see! It's been over two months since my last entry, which has admittedly made me uneasy at times. I tend to compare myself to other people a lot, so whenever I thought about this blog and the fact I wasn't writing, I thought about just ditching it and adding it to the pile of abandoned projects I have laying around.

But I decided against it. Now, coming back has been no easy feat, believe me. I tend to think, for some reason, people will be mad at me for... writing a new entry. On my own blog. Regardless of how much time has passed since the last one, it sounds ridiculous when you say it out loud (or write it, in this case).

What I've realized recently is that my problem was not only comparing myself to others, but also not knowing what "writing a blog" looked like for me. When I started this blog I did it out of nostalgia and a sudden, unexpected reminder of it. It was January 2nd, the world was fresh with the new year and the crisp winter, and I was determined to make a habit out of it. Meaning, I wanted to force myself to write every day, or, at least, every week. Key word being force.

If you read my post about my 2026 reading list, you'll know I intended to do the same with my journaling. Spoiler alert – it didn't work either! Yes, I did keep up with it at first. But then life came crashing in! And the first thing you drop when things get hard is, of course, what you don't think is essential. I didn't think of journaling as a core part of my day – in fact, I thought about it as a chore. It was something I did at the end of the day because everybody else seemed to sing its praises. Journaling is sold as being life-changing, and while I do admit I had a good time while reviewing my (not many) entries for 2025 when New Year's Eve came around, I didn't find enlightenment or any particular enjoyment in the act of daily journaling itself.

Just today, while cooking (something I've realised does bring a lot of joy into my life, actually), I was watching Matt D'Avella's video on why trying to constantly optimise your life is pretty much pointless.

 

  

 

 

The point he makes is basically that we're so busy trying to cram everything we're told is good or necessary into our lives that we forget what is actually important to us. And that to make room for that, you'll have to say no not only to things you don't want to do (that seems hard at first but becomes the easy part later), but also to things you want to do, simply because no matter how enjoyable they are (or were), you'll realise they're not a priority anymore when more important stuff comes into your life. In his case, two children under the age of 5. In my case, coming back to my hobbies.

 

The plan is simple: I have to stop working, or thinking about working, all the time, and make room in my life for those things that bring joy into it. My hobbies! Those things I started neglecting when I got into university due to a complete and utter lack of good time management (aside from planning my day to the minute in order to fit as much working into it as possible) and, later, the sense that I was only worthy as long as I was productive.

 

No more! We're going back to our old selves, trying to find that sense of whimsy in the little things we used to enjoy. Hobbies.

 

but what are hobbies?

 

So, turns out the easy part was to set the intention to do it. Now, the actually hard part is to find out how.

I kind of lost all sense of what non-academic enjoyment was after a while. Because I do naturally enjoy making lists, creating systems, and organizing, I made it a hobby to try and optimise my academic (and personal) life to its fullest. We now know that's bad, but back then, it seemed like a very reasonable thing to do. So, I downloaded a thousand different apps, each with a tiny difference that made it perfect (in my eyes) for my use case, totally different from the one I'd downloaded a week before and that had seemed just right then. I made and remade and remade lists of tasks and projects and everything in between. I tried to take notes in different programs. I kept a physical planner, then several digital ones.

And don't get me wrong – all of that was fun for me, because there is, obviously, something wrong with me. But! I slowly became obsessed with it, and when I came back into myself, I realised I'd lost the ability to enjoy things that were "not productive".

 

Can you believe there is not a single other gif of Kuzco freezing
the frame and breaking the fourth wall on Google Images?

 

*Frame freeze* Wait. So you think obsessively developing systems that are never used is productive? Of course not. I don't now. But I was so enamored with the idea of finding the perfect system back then, the One System that would streamline my life, make me infinitely more productive, and, most importantly, making so much room in my schedule I would be able to do non-academic things without guilt.
 

The One System to Rule Them All

So, essentially, once I realized I was, in fact, not being productive by doing that, it was time to get to work. And turns out actually spending all the time I'd previously spent doing my system tinkering in getting actual work done gets tiring very quickly, because I basically started working non-stop.

Now, don't imagine me (I'm the cat in my introduction post) hunched over my laptop, tapping the keys constantly, with a document that grows and grows without end – no eating, no sleeping, no nothing. I have a life! But if you've ever in your life been an adult you'll know having a job (even one you like) is demanding, and you have to be careful not to let it seep up all your energy, because you still need to do things you enjoy.

For a while I didn't. Can you believe it made me sad? I couldn't. For some time, I thought I was simply not being productive enough. No work done was enough and, since I always had things to do and I didn't have fixed working hours, I was always restless because I could not rest without feeling like some terrible beast would find me and tear me apart for not using the time I'd spent playing Breath of The Wild to, say, write a chapter of my thesis.

Enough is enough, I said. And booked an appointment with my therapist. And he told me exactly what I needed to hear: that I needed to have a strict working schedule and not work outside of it. Can't get something done? Unless it is absolutely urgent (it almost never is, I've quickly realised), it can wait until tomorrow, or Monday.

So now I have time! Time to spend on whatever I want, on all those hobbies I'd been neglecting.

 

and now, what are my hobbies? 

Once I came to the conclusion that I needed to enjoy my life, I set out to find hobbies. I naturally came back to the tried-and-true ones that I'd been spoon-fed in cozy YouTube videos, aesthetic Pinterest posts, and the like. Something like journaling every day! Commonplacing! Making beautiful spreads that require buying more supplies! I thought if I just managed to be disciplined about it, journaling would become part of my daily routine. And it wasn't just about the desire to embody that 'perfect daily routine' that so many people seemed to be preaching about on obviously staged videos. More than that, it was about the fact I didn't know what else I could count as a hobby if I didn't do what I had already been told was 'hobby-approved'.

I was scared to find out that I did not, in fact, have any hobbies. Reading and gaming and working out are all fine – but there are asterisks to each one of them. The rise in hobby-centered content (which was to be expected if we take into account how burnt out we all are from our jobs and the current state of the world) took a sudden turn and stopped being a 'free-for-all' safe space to start selling a new idea: you must stop consuming and start creating. And I agree with the sentiment. We've become consumers more than anything else – we consume more than we engage not only in creation, but also in social relationships, self-reflection, and connection with our surroundings. Of course, I do find it funny that, in shifting the focus towards creating, we are still trapped in the capitalistic trap of believing your time is only worth as much as there is something of value to show for it. Even if we think we're owning the capitalistic system by devoting time to creating magnets out of air-dry clay. Even then.

So, reading and gaming now seem shallow. I should be creating! Not only consuming what others have created! In itself, the word consumption is so drenched in negative feelings that I find it gross to apply it to something as beautiful as reading. I'm not consuming a book – if you know anything about literary theory you'll have heard about the reader being conceptualized as a co-creator of the text – I'm embodying it, entangling myself with it, experiencing it. That's very, very different from passively watching a Netflix show I don't care about just because the TV is already on, it was convenient, and I didn't have the energy to invest time in anything that actually sparks joy within me.

Engaging with works from other people – whether it be the plastic arts, literature, games, or anything else – is not consuming. Somewhere along the road, we lost sight of that, and started picturing ourselves as a terrible creature whose only trace in the world are the holes its hunger leaves behind.

 

Saturno devorando a su hijo by Francisco de Goya.
This painting remains one of my favorites of all time,
as it does for many other people

 

Working out, too, is a little too close to being productive. If you don't enjoy the way you're moving your body, it starts being about making yourself more marketeable or more optimised very quickly. I'm making peace with it now. Slowly.

So I was left with nothing. I didn't know where to even start – I was a failure by all cozy YouTube standards! I didn't enjoy air-dry clay as must as I should have, I wasn't buying coloring books by the dozen, journaling seemed to me like torture, and collecting trinkets or plushies just doesn't fit with my wannabe-minimalist-induced anxiety about owning too much stuff.

What did I even like to do? I didn't know myself! That was a scary thought coming from someone who spent their teenage years recluded within himself. You're telling me I didn't learn anything after all that time? That I'm doomed to go through the motions without knowing what I enjoy?

I'm sorry, Cozy K

 

Some days ago, though, something happened. I came across Ella Nym's channels on YouTube. They talked about Obsidian in a way that was different from your usual 'self-proclaimed entrepreneur tech bro who sells courses about some vague productivity thing' (you know, the kind whose natural habitat seems to be YouTube shorts). Being the Obsidian nerd I am, I'm binging their videos and loving it.

 In the first one I watched, they talked about how they track the media they engage with. And what struck me was the fact they used both a digital tracker and an analog one. And I says to myself, says I, "just how many trackers do you need?". And the answer came readily: Chris thought of tracking as another hobby of theirs.

 

This, I kid you not, was like getting struck by lighting. In all the time I'd spent building trackers in different apps and tearing them down to rebuild them, I'd never once allowed myself to think about it as a hobby. In fact, there is this motto in the Obsidian, Notion and similar programs communities that chastises people who tweak their systems as much as Chris (or I) does – "you can't spent more time designing your system than actually using it".

Yes, I'm ashamed to say I let Reddit bros tell me what to do with my life. But it happens to the best of us.

My point is, Chris had just nonchalantly said something I didn't think was allowed – that they enjoyed tinkering with their system, modifying it, undoing the modifications just to find out later they should redo them again. They liked designing the system, perhaps even more than using it. And that all of that was fine. I'd spent so long trying to put together a good system as quickly as possible in order not to "fall into the rabbit hole of procrastinating while thinking I was being productive" (I paraphrase the hive mind of the Obsidian Reddit forum here) that I hadn't let myself think whether my goal was to be productive or something else entirely.

Watching Chris's videos – not consuming, but engaging with them – has made me realize one of my hobbies is, in fact, digital gardening (though, to be fair, I think of myself more as a digital tinkerer). Not to create a personal knowledge management system (or PKMS, for the connoisseurs) that is as efficient and productivity-inducing as possible, and not only for my academic career – but to create a digital space I enjoy and want to spend time in.

As dystopic as it sounds, I know I've always been a more digital person than anything else. I love spending time on my computer, really. I love it to death. It is, and has always been, my safest space. I'm at my most creative when I'm on my laptop, even if I'm not actively editing on Photoshop. Which I'm also coming back to! I like doing digital stuff, perhaps more so than manual or analog things.

And that can be a hobby too! I was so focused on finding something that fit the very narrow definition the algorithm was providing that I completely disregarded what I actually liked doing. Which, as it turns out, is spending a lot of time inside Obsidian.

These days I've put even more hours into it. Inspired by Ella Nym's system, I added an Obsidian changelog page where I keep track of all the changes I've made to my vault and when. I've modified my templates and have started tracking more stuff that happens on my day-to-day life, not for efficiency, but because, as I've found, I like tracking data.

And really, who cares if other people find it boring, or un-hobby-like? I think it's important that I unlearn other people's expectations regarding how I spend my time. It might even become one of my hobbies.