Cross-post from Facebook - Max - Hobbies

I’ve been thinking about hobbies the last couple of days, specifically how to differentiate and categorize them. I’ve settled on active and passive as effective groupings. Active meaning there is an end product or a future goal in mind and passive meaning pure entertainment or stimulation. I think most hobbies can fall into either category and I think it’s often a slippery slope between passive and active hobbies. Examples of this for Susan and myself would be amateur motorsports and our love of pugs. We went from autocrossing our daily drivers (pretty passive) to taking on leadership roles, owning a tow rig, and using dedicated equipment (perhaps too active). We went from adopting two pugs 13 years ago (passive) to eventually volunteering for the Colorado Pug Rescue and fostering pugs (more active).

Some of our active hobbies become passive too. For me playing guitar is a great example of this. I was dedicated to the instrument for many years learning music theory, practicing hours a day, writing/recording, etc and now I primarily just play for sheer enjoyment when the mood strikes me.

Of course hobbies can flip back and forth between active and passive. I’m thinking of someone who might exercise regularly and then trains hard for a couple of months for a half-marathon before returning to their normal routine after the race is over.

Personally, I feel there are limits to the amount of active hobbies I can juggle at once. There’s only so much effort I can devote before my well runneth dry (or the outcome of the active hobbies suffer). When I’m flush with active hobbies I’m less likely to want to try new things or dedicate more effort to my current passive hobbies.

I also think me thinking about stuff like active versus passive hobbies is symptomatic of this time of year. The racing season is over and, with the cold weather and dark evenings, I’m not much in the mood to work on our cars. Thus these active hobbies that usually take up a lot of my time are paused and now I’m bored enough to start thinking about things like active versus passive hobbies and what they might mean.

BTW I Googled “active vs passive hobbies” looking for interesting articles on the subject but mostly found judgmental opinion pieces. The kind where if a person is not “active” they are wasting their lives. The way they’re written sounds like being “active” is a way of making oneself feel superior over others which is too bad as I think there is value in the discussion of active versus passive hobbies without getting judgy.