This is too sacred to sell

Monetizing your hobby is alluring. Should you do it?

Seoul, 1978. My mom was en route to her blind date couched in a friend hang — a popular matchmaking method in Korea. Her best friend’s sister had set it up. “He’s so fun, only here for a week!” she assured her. “Just come.”

The street food tent, praised for its blood sausage, was made of blue tarp and lit with bulbs hanging on thin rope — a delightful fire hazard. He proceeded to regale the group with exotic stories about Americans. Two hours, several plates of grilled snacks and many iconic green bottles of soju later, he was already half in love with her. 

As a sergeant in the U.S. Army, he could carry out a successful mission. They dated, got married, and she reluctantly moved to sleepy Fayetteville, North Carolina within three years.

She wanted to learn English and get a job, but he didn’t like the “questionable ladies” in the English as a Second Language (ESL) class. “I can communicate for the both of us,” he declared. In 1985, I was born at the Army hospital. They spoke to me in Korean, sat me in front of PBS’ Sesame Street and prayed it would do something. It did.

When I was six, my sister arrived. My dad had left the Army and they were working long, stressful days at a sandwich shop near Burbank, CA. A baby myself, I was given a job: change diapers and keep safe the squishy ball of giggles and screams. 

Meanwhile, my mom’s fear of speaking English ballooned bigger than my fledgling fluency. I became her simultaneous interpreter.

She made requests to me in a casual tone, but I knew big things were at stake. Ask the Safeway cashier to call my lost sister over intercom. Dispute bills with an exasperated PG&E guy. Translate Ms. Valente’s assessment of me to her at parent-teacher conference night.

How hobbies are like childhood

My youth was full of necessity and functions to perform, with high-stakes work replacing play.

I’ve seen the same thing happen with my clients who want their hobbies to generate income. “I love [baking, bodybuilding, photography, ceramics, gardening, etc.]. I want to turn it into a side hustle.” 

Yes, you can. But should you?

Like childhood, hobbies are sacred. 

“Monetize your hobby” is a concept born in the early aughts thanks to the proliferation of

• Internet SEO

• invention of iPhone/smartphones

• SaaS economy

• “platforms” like Instagram, Etsy, TikTok, Patreon, the blogosphere

Of course this inspires people. Many actively hate their jobs. With all of the above at your fingertips, why not find a way to earn a living doing something you love, like your hobby?

Monetizing a hobby is the process of converting a precious playspace and pastime into something functional that needs to perform.

Yes, you can. But should you?

Let it be (your hobby)

The idea of making money from something you love doing in your spare time is so pervasive we’ve forgotten what a hobby actually is. 

Hobbies are meant to be low-to-no stakes, enjoyable, and add richness to life. If you find one you love, it can become spiritual practice — a way of connecting with something vast.

I’ve practiced contemporary dance for ten years; it’s a metaphor for life. Dance teaches me about building momentum, releasing, partnering with, agility, stillness, letting go, taking up space, what my body can and can’t do, what it means to dance as a troupe versus solo. 

Hobbies can be magic portals to wisdom. You think you’re working on something, but it’s actually working on you.

So often, you must consider your friends, family, and society at large. Not with hobbies. Be deliciously self-centered! Do them in secret, or show-and-tell at dinner parties.

Real talk

Monetizing your hobby is starting a business around something that brings you moments of joy and maybe even profundity.

Yes, you can. But should you?

Eventually reality hits: you need to find product-market fit and excellent marketing strategy that works in the attention economy of our Digital Age. Did you get lucky or have the considerable resources to find it? Watch your hobby turn into a job. 

My parents didn’t want to put social and financial pressures on a child. They had to because mistakes could and have set them back months financially, years psychologically, or both. 

I like how I turned out. But for twenty years I got panic attacks, crumbled when I did not understand something, know what to say, do. Every year I discover another “normal” child development thing I never got to experience. 

Here’s a partial list of what it is to become artistic director of a contemporary dance company: 

• run a small business

• become an excellent teacher

• win at social media so students keep registering for your classes

• commute all over to dance studios 

• organize, recruit and pitch to your non-profit board

• learn how to write and apply for grants

• manage a company of dancers

• partner with the right sound and visual artists

• come up with conceptually and kinesthetically innovative, spell-binding choreography

If that sounds like a fun challenge, awesome, go! If not and you love something as I love dance, just “dance”. Do your thing with quiet or loud reckless abandon and sublime glee. 

Take care before asking the sacred to perform a function.