Knowing When It’s Time to Let Go: Understanding Hobby Burnout

Writer Andriel reflects on his personal experiences of hobby burnout and explores how we should deal with it.

Staring at the blank canvas on my drawing tablet, my mind went completely blank. You idiot, you wasted $200 on a brand-new drawing tablet that you’re never going to properly use. I forced myself to draw something. Each stroke brought about an increasing sense of discomfort. I don’t want to draw anymore, but I’m afraid that if I put down my pen I might never draw again.

Outside, away from the comfort of home, away from my drawing canvases, the unrelenting sun beat down on me. Overheating, sticky with sweat, body sore all over, I cast my fishing line out once again for that slim chance of getting the species I wanted. My troubles might be worth it in the end, but that end was nowhere in sight. I was so tired. I want topack up. I don’t want to continue being baked alive. I don’t want to continue fishing, but I’m afraid that if I put down my fishing rod, I might never achieve my bucket list catches.

What you’ve just read sums up different episodes of hobby burnout I’ve encountered over the past two years. You might’ve experienced something similar. Perhaps you started your hobby with a nervous excitement, carrying all those little hopes and aspirations. As you got good at your hobby, you might’ve thought that it would follow you for a lifetime. But a few years down the road, a creeping sense of dissatisfaction sets in. The hobby that once excited you has now become routine. Even then, you refuse to quit. To even take a break. Well of course you wouldn’t. After all, aren’t these hobbies what you do to relax after yet another intense day of school or work? There’s no reason why you should find them tedious. There’s no reason to quit. Yet your gut tells you otherwise.

Burnout, in relation to occupations, has become so widespread that even the World Health Organization (2019) has declared it as an “occupational phenomenon”. Several specific variations of burnout have been identified, yet hobby burnout remains almost unspoken in society. It’s almost as if we’re not supposed to acknowledge its existence, because what else do hobbies do besides bringing pleasure and satisfaction to our lives?

Except it’s quite the contrary. It is entirely possible for burnout to occur for almost any activity especially when we put a disproportionate amount of effort into it. You might’ve heard of caregiver burnout, which is the physical, mental and emotional exhaustion caregivers experience when they spend a large chunk of their lives caring for someone else. In the same way, hobby burnout occurs when you devote yourself too much to your hobbies. In my case, it was the sheer amount of time I spent and devoted, on top of the immense physical and mental energy expended fishing and drawing. Despite my body and spirit telling me to take a break, I persisted. I thought I was still having fun.

I wasn’t.

And it is this bastardisation of the concept of fun that is often the root cause of hobby burnout. I suspect that this is a byproduct of our competitive culture. Always got to strive to be better, achieve something greater. Always got to be doing something productive with your time, even when you’re not working. Otherwise, you’re wasting your life. As if rest, recreation and fun were intrinsically bad things. It’s that chasing of glory, attainment and even the notion of feeling “talented” in our hobbies that drives us mad. Sure, objectively speaking, in our fervent pursuit we might indeed achieve something, but we all end up poorer for it.

Given the integral role hobbies play in shaping our growth and influencing our beliefs and perspectives, especially in the aspect of self-expression, it’s no surprise that you start feeling a sense of fear and anxiety with respect to your identity when hobby burnout kicks in. In some sense, you experience some sort of identity crisis, and naturally you start looking for solutions. But these solutions are often temporary, and they only serve to heighten your negative feelings over time. That said, I think I’ve found one that works for me, and I hope that it might work for others as well.

I’m sure many of us have heard of this idea of managing one’s relationship with work, which broadly refers to setting boundaries with our work. But that relationship feels platonic, because most of us don’t exactly love work. It’s a different case for our hobbies. That’s why I’m suggesting that we start treating our relationships with our hobbies as loving relationships, almost akin to romantic relationships. And with it comes the whole spectrum of romance-related emotions - love, loss, despair and all that. Hobby burnout, in particular, is a manifestation of grief.

I’m reminded of this quote by Jamie Anderson, “Grief, I've learned, is really just love. It's all the love you want to give, but cannot.” Likewise, during hobby burnout, you don’t actually hate your hobby. In fact, you still love it very much. You have so much love to give, so many ideas and aspirations for the future. The only issue is that you’re simply too exhausted - physically, mentally and emotionally - to continue, and you start feeling guilty and anxious for not giving your all.

But it’s not the end of the world. Like any relationship, sometimes we just got to slow down and give ourselves a break. In my case, I slowed down my frequency of fishing and focused on other interests. Like any heated situation in relationships, slowing down allows us to recalibrate and focus on the actual problem at hand, in this instance, whatever that’s actually causing the burnout.

Of course, slowing down doesn’t solve everything. Sometimes it’s best to retire and let your hobbies go. It doesn’t necessarily mean you love them less. It might just mean you’re moving on to another stage of life, and you simply can’t commit so many resources to your hobbies, and that’s okay. They’re just part of your memories now, an experience you can look back fondly on. In my case, I simply quit drawing, and that was it.

In the end, it’s all about allowing your relationship with your hobbies to change. And this change isn’t always permanent. You might quit your hobby, with the expectation that you’ll never touch it again, but who knows? Years later, you might just fall back in love with it, this time with a deeper, more mature love, with additional awareness of your symptoms of burnout, so that you don’t drive your hobby into the ground once more.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be getting back to my art commission. :’)

Reference List

World Health Organization (2019). Burn-out an "occupational phenomenon": International Classification of Diseases. https://www.who.int/news/item/28-05-2019-burn-out-an-occupational-phenomenon-international-classification-of-diseases