I’ve been thinking about something the better part of a week now. It’s been mulling around in my head most of my waking hours, and I couldn’t make any sense of it. So I decided to outsource my question. Before bed on Saturday night, I posted my question on Facebook: “Once you turn a hobby into a vocation, can it ever become a hobby again?”
Here are the responses I got.
Kristen Williams: Nope because it becomes a chore not for enjoyment. You may enjoy your vocation but it will never be a hobby again.
Rebecca Dashnaw Mendez: Very well said Kristen!!! Couldnt have said it better!!!! BUT…. there may be a way to twist your warped mind (& I mean that in a good way of couse!!) around reasoning to MAKE yourself to believe you can!!!!
Kristen Williams: If one could make a hobby a vocation and still enjoy doing the same thing in their down time I would be very happy for them. I would want to know the way to do that and follow their recipe.
Dave John: I’d imagine it’s a bit like marrying a woman….take that however you will….
=)
The reason I was asking myself this question can be summed up in one easy word: computers. Computers have been a hobby of mine since I was about 7 years old. It continued that way until about 2007. By then, i/o Computers was open for a little over 2 years, and I was totally burnt out on computers. I was so burnt that I took a 90 day leave of absence from the company. When I came back to the company after spending some time over in England, I thought I was ready to jump back in. I was wrong. My heart just wasn’t into it anymore. The business lasted until the end of that year, at which time, we shuttered the business. The following month, being totally disgusted with PCs and their problem, I went out and bought a Macintosh. It has been my main system ever since.
Then I got to toying with the idea of opening up a computer business again this spring. I came up with a name for the new business, registered the domain, secured hosting, registered with all the major vendors, got an EIN, and had business cards made up. I set a opening date of Q4 of 2010. All that needed to be done was to finish the website. Then the voice in the back of my head started talking to me again. So I really want to get into fixing other people’s problems in my free time? I mostly did this as an extra source of income for my family, but at what cost was I going to do this? Back in the day with i/o Computers, i was typically putting in an extra 40hrs a week on the business. Days off were never days off, and vacations rarely were. But things are different now. It’s not going to be a partnership, and I can set whatever prices/hours I wanted to. This started to quell my anxiety.
Then the voices started getting louder.
I loved spending hours on the computer before we opened up the business. It was my favorite hobby. Since 2007, I have had very little interest in computers. These days I honestly rarely sit down at my desktop system. As a matter of fact, my PC is off for weeks at a time, something that was unheard of but 4 years ago. Since I turned a hobby into a vocation had a sullied my once loved hobby forever? On the rare occasion that I do get time to be on my computers, I either feel A) Guilty that I’m not doing something else or B) Bored. Having these feelings, do I really want to put myself in a position where I will be forced to do this several times a week?
Then there’s my family. I love coming home from work, playing with my son, and spending the night with my family. If I do open up a new business, I am going to be sacrificing that time with them for time with my clients. While I will be making some extra money for us, do I really want to do it this way. Then the voice starts telling me that I am the boss and I make all the rules.
At the end of all of this, I am still left with a question without answer. Maybe this is because there truly is no right answer.

So today (4/9/10) was the day that Apple, and his highness Steve Jobs, held a keynote unveiling iPhone OS 4.0. I was getting ready for work at the time of the keynote (1pm EST) so I wasn’t able to be like the legion of pathetic people who sat for an hour or so hitting the refresh button on all of the ‘live blogs’ covering the event. Instead, I did the normal, sane thing which was to check out a few stories on my break at work, and then watch the entire keynote in MPEG-4 glory after I got home from a full day of work. Hey, call me what you will, but a refresh slamming fuck-tard I am not.
Twev1701.net is written by Trevor Shafer. Here you will find interesting articles about science fiction, computers, technology, and life in general. You may also find not-so-interesting articles about the weather, his cats, how he tends to hurt himself quite often, and life in retail. You will also find lots of half-naked women populating these digital pages. 






