The Danger Of Turning Your Hobby Into a Career

Most days, it is great, but some days, it isn’t

Grant Piper
4 min readJun 5, 2024
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Many people think that turning a hobby into a career is a blessing. And in many ways, it is. People say things like, “If you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.” Unfortunately, that isn’t true. Work will always be work. Work can be enjoyable. It can be fulfilling. But no matter what you do, some days work is going to feel like work. I love reading and writing, but there are some days when it feels like work. There are some days when I am just not feeling it, but I no longer have the luxury of not doing these things if I don’t want to.

I spun my hobbies of reading and writing into a moderately successful venture, but it is still work. Most days, work is great. But some days, it is a slog. While I would rather be researching and writing day in and day out rather than running HR at a mid-level firm, it has had some drawbacks that I didn’t anticipate when I started down this path.

Turning my primary hobbies into work has deprived me of my hobbies. I transmuted my hobbies into enjoyable work. But they aren’t hobbies anymore. And that has been a bummer.

I have always loved reading and writing. You can easily do it on the go. You can do it at home. It is relatively cheap to sustain. Now, I have…

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Grant Piper

Professional writer. Amateur historian. Husband, father, Christian.