One of my (arguably too many) hobbies is LEGO. Like, buying sets, building sets, and then making my own stuff. Honestly, “hobby” is probably an understatement; this has been a lifelong passion of mine, as attested to by the multitude of storage drawers on the desk next to me as I write this. There’s a social aspect to this too: I joined a Lego forum in my teens and shared builds there as well as cut my teeth on writing and video production writing fanfic and making fanart.
Even now I’m still a part of a small niche in the Lego fan community, talking crap about new sets and taking part in group builds. After some encouragement from a friend, I started an Instagram account for my builds, since that seems to be where all the cool kids are these days (rip brickshelf). I uploaded a few and then… it’s been kinda dormant.
Part of that is due to the effort of putting stuff online. I want my stuff to look nice and, until I get around to investing in a backdrop or lightbox, that means no small amount of touching things up in photoshop. The pressure is, of course, self-imposed. There’s nothing at stake if this isn’t perfect, there’s no competition and it’s not like I’m trying to make money off of this hobby.
But that pressure is there. We live in the attention economy, a place where everything you put online is Content, and even if you don’t mean to monetize it, you could. After all, there’s Etsy and Patreon and Rebrickable, if you’re good at something, you could make money doing it. You can be productive, you can optimize your hobby to reach maximum enjoyment.
The pressure of all this means that, even if I’m just throwing a picture of a build I did on Instagram to show off, there’s that need for those damn likes, for approval. So what I put out there has to be the absolute best, especially if I don’t post often. Plus, it’s gotta be posted at the right time so that the Almighty Algorithm will see fit to share it with the masses, so it’ll actually be seen.
There goes the pleasure of doing something for the sake of doing it, here comes that terrible specter of The Hustle. That need to be doing something, to be doing something worthwhile, to be productive. Doing something for the sake of it is a waste. In the process, the act of building becomes a daunting task: not only do I have to build something, but even after it’s done there’s the photograph and the posting of it all.
Like a lot of my more musey posts, I don’t have an answer or a tidy summation of it all. Nestled in here is my own journey to being willing to be able to enjoy something in and of itself without the pressure for it to be something more. Maybe this is another time for me to learn to let go and go with the good enough, to let a hobby be something done for fun and let that be enough.
Anyway. Here’s the link to the Instagram post of the build.
Essays, Not Rants! 