Why Adults Lose Their Hobbies: How I’m Finding Creativity Again
A personal post about creativity, adulthood, nostalgia, and remembering that hobbies do not have to be useful to matter.
There is something unexpectedly emotional about returning to an old hobby.
Not just because of the hobby itself, but because of who it takes you back to. The younger version of you who made things without questioning whether they were good enough. The version of you who could spend hours writing, drawing, crafting, collecting, playing, reading or creating without wondering if it was productive, impressive, profitable, or worth explaining to anyone else.
I miss that version of me sometimes. The one who did things simply because she liked them, because it meant happiness for a few hours.
Somewhere along the way, a lot of my hobbies quietly disappeared. Not because I stopped caring about them, or enjoying them. They just slowly got pushed to the side by work, tiredness, money, anxiety, comparison, life admin, and the general pressure to become a sensible adult who does sensible adult things.
Honestly, I think adulthood has a way of shaming you into mundane living if you are not careful.
When creativity starts to feel embarrassing
When you are younger, hobbies feel normal. You are allowed, no, encouraged to try new things. It doesn't matter if you colour outside the lines, make a mess, or are just generally bad at something. You can start something, abandon it, try something new, return to the previous hobby, and enjoy something for no reason yoher than it makes you happy.
When did we stop putting happiness on a pedestal in favour of social expectations?
Then you get older, and suddenly everything feels like it needs a purpose. If you:
write, people ask if you are publishing anything
take photos, people ask if you are selling them
craft, people ask if you are opening an Etsy shop
start a hobby, there is this strange invisible pressure to become good at it quickly, turn it into content, monetise it, or justify why it deserves your time
I think that is where a lot of the joy disappears, because hobbies are not supposed to feel like another performance review.
They are not supposed to become another place where you measure yourself and decide you are failing. They are not supposed to make you feel guilty because you are not consistent enough, talented enough, productive enough or committed enough.
Sometimes a hobby is just a soft place to land.
The hobbies I’m finding my way back to
The hobbies I do, or want to return to, are:
Cross-stitching
When I was little, my mum would work until 5 pm, which meant, I had 2 hours extra at school at an after school club.
What was this you ask, cross-stitch! It was something easy I could follow, and I loved seeing my creations come to life. I even remember my first one, which was a little grey bunny rabbit. Unfortunately, I have no pictures of that original cross-stitch, and it is lost to time.
Photography
I’ve always liked taking photos, and even carried that interest into college by taking photography. I really like the idea of sitting and waiting for that perfect moment, whether it is for a landscape shot or animal photography, or stumbling across something I see as beautiful, where a photo is needed to capture the moment. Pictures, I find, remind me a lot about moments in time that pass, memories fade, but those flickers of happiness that photos can reignite, that is why I love photography.
Writing
Writing is another passion I have, even though I distinctively remember a teacher at my high school telling me to ‘aim lower’ when they asked what I wanted to be when I was older, and I said a writer. I was 10. 20 years later and I still remember that moment, and how may cheeks grew warm. Don’t tell kids to aim lower, sure, inform them of what it would take to achieve their goals, but never imply they aren’t worthy of the dream they have.
I still love writing, good or not, it’s therapeutic for me, even if spellcheck is my best friend.
Some of them make me feel creative, while others make me feel calm, especially if you count organising buttons a hobby. Some make me feel nostalgic, while there are those that remind me of a quieter version of life before everything became emails, bills, appointments, laundry, comparison, career pressure, and trying to remember seventeen passwords at once, and more laundry, which deserves to be here twice as there is sooo much!
Some just make me feel like me, which is the part I want to hold onto. I think hobbies can be strangely powerful in that way. They can connect you back to a more peaceful time, before the world felt so loud. A time when making something did not need to mean anything beyond “I enjoyed this.”
There is something lovely about picking up an old interest and remembering that this part of you did not disappear completely, it was just waiting under a pile of that laundry I mentioned.
Why so many of us stop
I don’t think I am the only adult who has slowly lost touch with the things they used to enjoy.
In the GOV.UK Taking Part arts survey (that’s right, I did research to feel better), adults who had not recently engaged with the arts most commonly said it was because they were not interested, did not have time, or had a health problem or disability. The “not having time” part feels especially familiar, because adult life can make free time feel like something you have to earn rather than something you are allowed to have.
AXA also found that lifestyle changes, such as having a child or changing jobs, were one of the biggest reasons people abandoned hobbies. That also makes sense to me. Life changes, and the small joyful things are often the first things we drop because they do not feel urgent.
But, I think the sad thing is that hobbies are often the things that help us feel like people, not just workers, partners, friends, bill-payers, problem-solvers, calendar-managers and tired adults trying to get through the week.
Ipsos found that 68% of adults involved in creative activities wished they used their creativity more in life, rising to 74% among 18 to 34-year-olds. That really stuck with me, because it suggests so many of us still have that creative part inside us, we just do not always know how to make room for it anymore.
Hobbies do not have to become something
Okay, I'm really bad with this, and it's something I am trying to remind myself, CONSTANTLY. A hobby does not have to become a side hustle, a fully fledged brand, or even be impressive. It does not have to look good online, or even be something I am naturally talented at, or even last forever.
I’m allowed to try something because it interests me, even if I'm terrible at it. I'm allowed to pick something up again after being annoyed with a hobby or even just forgetting about it. Crochet I’m looking at you.
I am allowed to be bad at it. I am allowed to make something messy. I am allowed to start again after months of not touching it. I am allowed to enjoy something without turning it into proof that I am good enough.
That last one is the hard part, because I think, somewhere in adulthood, I started treating hobbies like they had to justify their existence. If they were not making me money, improving me, relaxing me perfectly, making me look interesting, or becoming something useful, I started to question whether they mattered. But maybe the whole point is that they do matter, even when they are not useful. Especially then.
Returning to creativity feels like returning to myself
Part of this year of starting again in my thirties is about doing more of the things that make my life feel like mine. Not just the big things, not just the sensible goals, not just the things that look good written down. The small things too. The hobbies. The photos. The writing. The crafts. The notebooks. The little creative ideas. The things I used to love before I became so aware of being judged.
I want to stop leaving those parts of myself behind, and I want to stop treating creativity like something I am only allowed to have when the rest of my life is perfectly organised. Because realistically, let’s face it, if I wait until everything is calm, tidy, affordable, sorted, stable and emotionally convenient, I may never pick anything up again.
Life is chaotic. The world is loud. Being an adult is strange and expensive and often more admin-heavy than advertised, so maybe hobbies are not childish. Instead, maybe they are a quiet form of resistance. A way of saying: I am still allowed to enjoy things. I am still allowed to play. I am still allowed to be curious. I am still allowed to make something badly and love it anyway.
I want to make room again. I do not want my life to become so practical that there is no room left for joy. I do not want to look back and realise I spent years only doing what was necessary. I do not want to abandon every soft, creative, playful part of myself because adulthood convinced me those things were not important.
So, I am trying to make room again. Slowlyyyyyy. Imperfectly. In between work and tiredness and overthinking and everything else life insists on throwing into the schedule. I am trying to let hobbies be just that, hobbies.
Not evidence. Not content. Not pressure. Not another thing to fail at. Just small ways of coming back to myself, and maybe that is enough.
I feel like, picking up an old hobby in your thirties is not silly at all, maybe it’s a reminder that the younger version of you is still in there somewhere, waiting patiently with a notebook, a camera, a craft box, a half-finished project, and the quiet hope that you might come back.
What better time than now, no matter the age.
