The "Side Hustle" Delusion: Why We Can’t Just Have Hobbies Anymore

There was a time, not so long ago, when it was perfectly acceptable to be bad at something.

You could spend a Sunday afternoon painting a watercolour that looked like a muddy bruise. You could knit a scarf that was mathematically impossible, defying the laws of geometry. You could bake a loaf of bread that could be used as a doorstop. And you would do these things simply because the act of doing them felt good. The reward was the process. The product was irrelevant.

But in the economy of 2025, to be an amateur—from the Latin amator, meaning "lover of"—is a sin.

We have entered the era of the "Side Hustle," a term that began as empowerment and ended as a prison. We have been sold a lie that says "Do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life." The reality, as discovered by millions of exhausted millennials and Gen Z'ers, is quite different: Do what you love for money, and you will eventually work every hour of every day, and you will learn to hate the thing you once loved.

The Sourdough Trap

Elias, 34, lives in a flat in Clapton that smells permanently of yeast. Three years ago, he was a graphic designer who baked on weekends to decompress. He found a tactile peace in the kneading of dough, a primal connection to chemistry and heat.

Then came the fatal sentence. It is the most dangerous sentence in the modern English language, usually uttered by a well-meaning friend at a dinner party: "You should sell this."

"It started as a compliment," Elias tells me, leaning against a counter stacked high with bannetons. "Then it became a website. Then an Instagram account. Then a stall at Broadway Market."

Today, Elias doesn't bake for peace. He bakes for a 4:00 AM deadline. He bakes to pay for the rising cost of organic flour. He worries about margins, about packaging waste, and about the algorithmic reach of his latest Reel.

"I don't smell the bread anymore," he admits, looking at a perfect, golden loaf with eyes that are dead tired. "I just smell the logistics. I look at this loaf and I see a unit of inventory. I see a customer complaint about shipping costs. I see the fact that I haven't taken a holiday in two years because the starter needs feeding."

Elias has successfully monetized his passion. In exchange, he has lost his sanctuary.

The Internal Capitalist

Why do we do this? Why have we turned our leisure time into labor?

Part of it is economic necessity. Let’s be honest: living in London, or New York, or any major hub in 2025 requires a level of income that a single salary rarely covers. When your rent is 60% of your salary, a hobby that costs money feels like an indulgence, while a hobby that makes money feels like survival.

But there is something deeper, more psychological at work. We have internalized the logic of the marketplace. We have installed a little capitalist in our brains who sits on a throne of guilt, whispering that time spent without profit is time wasted.

We have ceased to value "useless" things. If you are learning Spanish, it’s to make yourself more employable. If you are running, it’s to optimize your health data for lower insurance premiums. If you are drawing, it’s to build a portfolio.

We have forgotten how to play. We only know how to produce.

The Content Mill of the Soul

Sarah, 29, used to be a potter. She loved the mud. She loved the silence of the wheel. Now, she is a content creator who occasionally makes pots.

"The pottery is secondary," she says, scrolling through her TikTok feed, which is a endless cascade of 'Satisfying Clay Cutting' videos. "The algorithm doesn't care if the mug is good. It cares if the video of me making the mug has a hook in the first three seconds."

Sarah’s studio is no longer a place of messy creativity; it is a set. She has to worry about lighting. She has to worry about angles. She has to narrate her "process" in a chirpy, accessible voice, flattening the complex, frustrating reality of art into a bite-sized nugget of "inspiration."

"I spend 20% of my time throwing clay and 80% editing video," she says. "And the worst part is, the comments. People don't want the art. They want the aesthetic of the art. They want to consume my lifestyle. I’m not selling mugs; I’m selling the fantasy that I’m a relaxed person. But I’m the most stressed person I know."

This is the cruelty of the Creator Economy. It demands that you not only be a craftsman but also a marketing department, a videographer, a customer service rep, and a public personality. It demands that you open the doors to your private joy and let the public trample all over it with their demands for "more content."

The Right to be Mediocre

The tragedy of the Side Hustle culture is that it kills the "middle." You are either a professional, or you are nothing. There is no space left for the dedicated amateur who is happily mediocre.

We need to reclaim the right to be bad at things. We need to reclaim the right to do things that have absolutely no market value.

There is a profound, quiet rebellion in doing something useless. To plant a garden that you will not sell tickets to. To write a poem that you will not publish on Substack. To learn a song on the guitar just to play it for your cat.

These acts are the last refuge of our humanity. They are the moments where we exist for ourselves, not for the market.

I ask Elias if he ever thinks about quitting the bread business.

"Every day," he says. "I dream about buying a loaf of Wonderbread from the corner shop. I dream of eating a piece of toast that I didn't bake, that I didn't photograph, that I didn't monetize."

He looks out the window at the grey London sky.

"I think," he says softly, "that would taste like freedom."