It's time to revisit our childhood hobbies

Do you ever think back to your childhood and realise that you had loads of hobbies?

Do you ever think back to your childhood and realise that you had loads of hobbies?

And then stop and realise that you haven’t done any of them in well, forever.

I feel that there is a wide spread myth woven deeply into our modern lives: the idea that meaning is measured by titles, achievements, and sharing our successes. We've been conditioned to believe that the only lives worth living are those played out on the world's stage, also known as the internet. This myth pushes us into endless striving, chasing after milestones that promise fulfillment.

As a child, I loved to paint, dance, scrapbook, journal and make amateur music videos with my friends. I devoted countless hours to these hobbies without hesitation. I spent time pouring over them without feeling that they were a ‘waste’ of time. They weren't chores or tasks; they were pure joy.

Yet somewhere along the path to adulthood, between the demands of university, career building, relationships, and ‘adulting’, these quietly slipped away.

Why does this happen? Maybe it’s because we've internalised society's glorification of the summit: promotions, accolades, wealth.

But as Albert Camus poignantly illustrates in his Myth of Sisyphus, true meaning isn't found at the summit, it's found within the climb itself (or many it was Miley Cyrus that said it better). Sisyphus rolls his boulder endlessly uphill only for it to roll back down again. Yet Camus asks us to imagine him happy not because he reaches the peak, but because he embraces the struggle of the task.

Also, maybe life's meaning isn't found in grand achievements but in reclaiming those small moments we once loved.

The quiet revolution lies in choosing authenticity over visibility; depth over display. When we revisit childhood hobbies, we're reconnecting with our truest selves. The selves unburdened by external validation.

Choosing a quieter existence doesn't mean giving up ambition entirely; rather, it's ambition balanced by reflection. As Seneca said:

"It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it."

Journaling has been a perfect example of this quiet rebellion for me. In fact, Joan Didion writes about keeping notebooks not to document events but to capture fleeting feelings and impressions; to preserve who we were at a particular moment. It's not performative; it's introspective and personal. Journaling becomes a way to hold onto the intangible - to freeze time and revisit it later with fresh eyes.

Maybe reclaiming childhood hobbies is about rediscovering joy in mundane moments, painting without worrying about skill level, dancing without fear of judgment, scrapbooking simply because it’s fun. For the joy of it.

Simone de Beauvoir argued that meaning isn't something we stumble upon but something we actively create through deliberate choices.

In a world obsessed with curated feeds and performative success, embracing forgotten hobbies is an act of defiance, a rejection of societal expectations in favour of personal authenticity. It’s about deciding that your worth isn't measured by how much you achieve or acquire but by how deeply you live each moment.

So perhaps it's time to dust off old journals tucked away on shelves or pick up paintbrushes left untouched for years.

Maybe it's time to dance again, not for applause or recognition, but just because we can. Because we want to.