Today I want to talk about creative hobbies and how important they are to your creative business and, you know, just life in general.

Lots of creative business owners start off by trying to build a business around an existing hobby. And that’s great! But the thing is – once you start building a business around something, it’s no longer really a hobby.

Here’s an example. When I started my Etsy shop many moons ago, it was because I really loved knitting and I was doing it constantly. Eventually, the people I knew started asking me to make them hats and scarves and stuff. And they encouraged me to start selling them online. This seemed like a great idea! I was knitting all the time anyway – why wouldn’t I want to make some money from it?

But doing that required me to do a lot of other things too – it wasn’t just about knitting. I had to take photos, create listings, market my products, and send out shipments regularly. And aside from all those extra tasks, the fact that I now had really strict deadlines for finishing up my hats in order to ship them out on time was sort of taking the fun out of it.

After awhile, the work I was putting into it just didn’t seem worth it anymore. And I had a lot of other projects and ideas going on. So I stopped running my shop and I stopped knitting for awhile too. But that’s just my story – I’m not saying that you should quit whenever you get a little worn out.

But! You can try to avoid that sort of burnout by finding a good balance of creative hobbies!

The benefits of creative hobbies:

• They give you regular breaks from the stress of running a business
• They give your creativity a refresh – remember, the more you use the more you have!
• They can help you connect with other creatives

So how do you find the right hobbies?

This is really simple – you just need to try things! There is no one right answer, because if you start something and decide that it doesn’t really work for you, you can just move onto something else.

You never need to worry about being “the best” at your hobbies. They’re just fun! And that’s something that you need to always keep in mind. Because you don’t want to turn your hobby into a competitive, stressful thing. Just have fun! Be bad at it! Celebrate when you get any better at all!

Recently, I’ve gotten into weaving, lettering, and back into knitting and abstract painting. These are all things I plan to do with no intention of selling them or creating tutorials or courses around them. For a really long time, I had this idea that I should create business content around literally every type of creative thing I was doing.

But here’s the thing. There are people that are so much better at doing all of those things than I was. I’m not saying you have to be the best at something just to blog about it. But I was really doing myself a disservice by jumping right into trying to build a business around those things, instead of taking the time to actually enjoy and learn about them from others.

So here’s your challenge for the week: try one new thing. Just one. Don’t do it with the intention of building a business around it or becoming the best in the world at it. Just have fun. And if it doesn’t work out, then try something else next week.

Here are some really simple things you can do this week to jump into a new creative hobby:

• write in a journal. a real paper journal. not online.
• buy a blank canvas and just paint an abstract design with all of your favorite colors
• grab your camera and take a walk, shooting random images as you go
• go through one of your favorite magazines and cut out images that appeal to you, then turn them into a collage
• try out weaving, but don’t use a pattern or anything – just freestyle
• buy some plain sugar cookie mix and decorate them with all different frosting colors
• try sketching a still life image
• knit. just a scarf or something simple
• doodle in your journal
• take a pottery class

Do you have anything to add to the list? What are some of your favorite creative hobbies?