what is a hobby? (part 1)

Part of being born of very1 motivated parents is a sort of fear of complacency. I'm not saying I don't get complacent, I'm saying that whenever I do I get this looming feeling of dread which can sap the joy out of whatever it is I'm doing. There's also a guilt with confronting others with anything made from less than my 110%, since it always feels like I'm scamming people out of my "true potential"2. I end up with a pretty complicated relationship with my hobbies (this blog included), even if I've firmly established in my head what my goals are.

Here's what I mean: From early 2021 to September of 2024, I livestreamed chess ~3-4 hours twice a week. During that period, there was always a latent internal tension between my desire to be "good at streaming"3, and my casual enjoyment of playing some chess, meeting some interesting people, and arguing about which of the first two Kung Fu Panda movies is better4. I spent some time on it, learned the tech, and got better at expressing myself and multitasking. By the time I started the break I'm currently on I was consistently getting 20+ average viewers every stream5.

The reason I played chess on stream was because it was already a hobby of mine and something I am relatively good at. I play in tournaments, was active in my local chess club, and spent time studying the game to improve. Chess also had that conflict, where on the one hand I wanted to be better for it's own sake and for the sake of those around me6 , but I also just enjoy the community and the environment fostered by my local chess scene. I got active enough that eventually I had running the chess club given to me as a responsibility, and with that trying to help newer kids learn.

Both of these tensions finally came to a head in late September, when getting my wisdom teeth removed forced a break from streaming and the start of the school year massively reduced activity in the chess club. When both of those things happened, I was forced to take a step back from it all and came to a conclusion I had been dreading for months: both chess club and streaming has become obligations rather than something I wanted to do. Streaming had a self-imposed pressure to keep view count up7, and chess club had an others-imposed pressure to try and get kids who had little interest in chess to care. This had me (and honestly, still has me to an extent) in crisis, since two of the hobbies that I had invested the most time in and most associated with myself were both shown to be more than a little rotten on the inside.

I'm cutting myself off here. Spoilers for part 28, but part of the reason I made this blog how I did is to try and do better about letting projects be done, and this post has been bouncing around for weeks. I think it's one of those things where you can't really write past where you are, and I'm not truly past all of this yet. I'll be back, but in the meantime I need to let this one go.


  1. And I mean very, to the point where it's almost certainly unhealthy.^
  2. A completely meaningless self-imposed standard.^
  3. Increase my viewership, make streaming profitable, improve the overall quality of the content I was producing, etc.^
  4. It's the second, if you're curious.^
  5. Not that many in the grand scheme of things, but harder than you'd think starting from 0.^
  6. Being able to coach and help prep people for tournaments brings me great joy.^
  7. Alongside well intentioned viewers asking how my chess improvement had been going.^
  8. Probably.^