Truth. I enjoying making all kinds of different things and almost anytime I show anyone whatever my latest project is, it’s always “oh, you should make and sell these!” No. I want to enjoy my stress-free hobbies, unbeholden to the requests of customers.
The surest way to hate a thing you used to love is to try to make money off of it.
Grew up in love with computers. Went to RIT for computers. Got a job working with computers. Hate computers. Quit entire industry, love computers again.
This is honestly why I have an incredibly hard time doing personal software projects. I have TONS of thoughts and concepts that I have at various points started to play around with, but as soon as I start getting into the more mundane aspects, I just… can’t maintain my motivation, and I won’t even want to touch it for ages.
Most of my home lab is for automation. Automation of everything. Media, home automation, meal planning, Todo list generation. It’s all so I can be a little lazier. I however love the mundane stuff though so I got that going for me lol
Media, home automation, meal planning, Todo list generation.
Which software are you using and/or recommend? (I’ve got Jellyfin and Homeassistant going for the first two, but I’m still undecided on the latter.)
I’ve got a full *arr stack going alongside Plex. Home Assistant for the house. Mealie for recipes and meal planning.
Home Assistant ties most of it together with the help of n8n for some janky API type stuff.
It reminds me of the story where these kids played music loudly each night.
No matter what he tried, the neighbor could not get them to stop practicing late at night.
Eventually each time they played, he started to give them money. Eventually they stopped playing.
It was trashcans, the way I remember it. They were making noise beating on the trashcans coming back from school and no complaint would get them to stop.
Once he said, “hey, that sounds pretty good, love your youthful energy!” and promised to pay them each a quarter every day of they would come by and play the trashcans every day, then it became A Chore.
I really haven’t thought of that in years, but it’s still right. I more or less can’t take commissions at all, regardless of hobby, because it makes it a chore and I get hyper stressed out.
I knit and crochet for my mental health. There was a point where when I was a naive teenager I did try to make money off the hobby, but it made me utterly despise the hobby as a whole and turned something I used to relieve stress into a new stressor. I don’t sell my projects, and never will. I gift projects to those close to me, as well as on very rare occasion I let people buy me yarn in exchange for a project for them in my spare time. As well on occasion making projects to donate or give to be used in charity raffles.
I don’t know if it’s the psychological aspect of money or what, but it just ruins it for me and creates a stress I just can’t deal with. I also feel with my current approach it makes my projects even more priceless since you literally can’t put a price tag on it. If you get a gift from me, it means I feel that I know you well enough to cherish it and enjoy it. It’s why I love to knit for my grandma.
I also knit/crochet as a very industrious hobby. When people tell me that I should sell my items, I reply that they couldn’t afford my items. It took me 100+ hours to make this sweater and the yarn alone cost me over $200. This sweater is in the ballpark of $1500 in value. You can’t afford me.
I feel you, I’m a knitter as well and the amount of people who have suggested I start selling…they don’t understand the real value of hand-made items because they’ve been used to buying mass-produced crap from the other side of the world.
Ran into this issue with my daughter when she was trying to sell her stuff at local business and craft fairs. Some of her stuffed animals would take her 5 to 10 hours to make, and would price them accordingly, with some of her largest items being close to $200us.
People would get sticker shock, and even after explaining that not only did she spend a full work days amount of time crocheting the item, she would also hand spin a lot of the yarn she used as well, they never seemed to realize the actual value of her stuff. It seemed to usually be people of my generation and older that had the most issues. She sold most of her stuffies to people in their teens and twenties, and a surprising amount of yarn to really old ladies.
nope.
