[bedobi]

...there’s a deeper reason... so many people don’t have hobbies: We’re afraid of being bad at them. If you’re a jogger, it is no longer enough to cruise around the block; you’re training for the next marathon... When your identity is linked to your hobby — you’re a yogi, a surfer, a rock climber — you’d better be good at it, or else who are you?

Lost here is the gentle pursuit of a modest competence, the doing of something just because you enjoy it, not because you are good at it... It steals from us one of life’s greatest rewards — the simple pleasure of doing something you merely, but truly, enjoy.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/29/opinion/sunday/in-praise-...

...leisure is time away from work, not facilitating it.

By viewing work as something we do to support our leisure time, rather than our hobbies as something to lower our stress so we can get back to work, we can actually start enjoying our lives. (I know, wild idea.)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/10/smarter-living/the-case-f...

[vladvasiliu]

> When your identity is linked to your hobby [...]

> Lost here is the gentle pursuit of a modest competence, the doing of something just because you enjoy it, not because you are good at it...

Isn't this the issue, though? If "you are what you do", because you link your identity to that, and what you do isn't "good", I can see how than can cause some issues.

To take your example, if you're taking up jogging, so you can run a marathon, so you can take some Instagram photos at the finish line, so you can get the likes, this is the end result. So of course, just cruising around the block won't attract the likes, so it doesn't really help the end goal, does it?

I think the issue is one of not stopping to smell the roses.

[chii]

> ... so you can get the likes

Social affirmation is a common desire. It's not wrong to want social affirmation though. The problem only comes when you either never achieve anything worthy of affirmation, leading you to feel useless, or you fake things to get social affirmation (such as those weird "animal rescue" videos, which turns out to be the owner abusing their animals and filming a rescue for likes etc).

I say, people who desire social affirmation should introspect, and see if they are doing something they like doing or it is entirely only affirmation they want.

[roeles]

I have seen this a lot in my hobby (flying gliders). People spend boatloads of their time and money chasing some temporary fame, meanwhile suffering from something that not a lot of people are able to experience.

[gkop]

I’m curious to learn more about your ideas, but you’re more or less equating a person’s identity to their relationship with social media, it’s not a strong argument.

[vladvasiliu]

Not exactly. My point was that people may be equating their identity with certain activities in order to attain social media status.

As another commenter said, social validation is something sought after by people, and may be common enough to be considered "normal".

But my idea is that if you only take part in an activity because, for whatever reason, you want to be "a person who does X" and associate your identity with it ("I'm a runner"), you are unlikely to partake in that activity in a "leisurely fashion", because you have to conform to what "a person who does X" is expected to do by their audience. The comment to which I was initially replying was giving the example of running, so I was looking for an explanation of why many people won't just "cruise around the block" but instead try for a marathon, complete with selfies at the finish line.

While I definitely don't hold social media in high regard, my post was not intended to be a dig at it. But I understand that my position is likely to color my discourse to things related to it.