Aaron Lawn: Working, Hobbies, Failure

I’ve got the mixed blessing of working with my primary hobby.  Spend your workday around games?  What could be better?  or worse?

I used to be really into music.  For some reason that I don’t quite know, music, especially contemporary music, latches onto the young.  Rebellion?  Free Time to go to concerts?  I don’t know.  But the fact remains that people seem to earn their love for music in their teens and it proceeds to carry over into later life.  Sometimes it fades, sometimes it doesn’t.

Again, I claim no special knowledge about why it fades for some people and not for others.  I presume there’s always a reason, different for every person.  For me, it was work.

I started DJing at the radio station¹ at my institute of Higher Education.  Within a year I was doing more.  I spent several years doing a variety of radio work – General Manager, Publications, Development.  And it killed music for me.

Oh, I still love music.  But my music knowledge and experience dies a hard death within a year or two of 1996.  Working in the Music Industry didn’t make me love music less – but it did push it out of the realm of pleasure and into a job.  I lost all desire to follow up on new artists – and pretty much also lost desire to follow up on artists I loved.

So what did I wind up doing five years later?  Making my other great love² my job again.  Seven-plus years later I’m still at it.  Have I lost my desire to keep up on games?  Not yet.

I occasionally ask myself why not – and if I can offer any insight into how to work within a hobby you love and not drift away from it.  Here’s what I’ve concluded.

Keep some of the hobby alive away from work³
I’ve kept a small game group running at my home once a week.  We’ve been pretty static – and while everyone in the group is someone I met through work⁴, the game night is fairly separate.  Any time I put together a longer game day for my own amusement, I keep it out of work.  Not because I haven’t put together a great place⁵ to play games, but because I need to keep some of my hobby separate from work.  I also participate in a weekly game night at work – I certainly don’t need to keep hobby and work completely separate.

Don’t overdose.
Keeping a second or third hobby is great.  Or whatever it takes to keep yourself from thinking about your hobby/work all the time.  In these days of the intertubes, most people who work in front of a computer spend break time on something non-work⁶.  I’ve found it’s hard to take a break from work if that break involves the same topic.  Since keeping up to date on one of my hobbies is my job – I treat it as such, and make sure that when I take a break it involves something that is completely unrelated to games.

Related, but different to the last, know when to stop
I’ve seen a number of mistakes from gamers sending themselves into the industry of their hobby.  Buying personal copies of every single game that comes out, trying to play everything, or worse, become an expert in every aspect of their hobby.  The last almost got me.  Early on, I ran EndGame by myself, and I tried to know everything about everything we sold.  It burnt me out very quickly.  Games as a hobby are a wide enough category that trying to be an expert about board game, and CCGs, and miniatures, and Role-playing, and Historicals, and…

Well, pretty quickly you aren’t an expert on any of them and you hate them all.  Luckily, I caught myself before that and found some partners that would help with the knowledge burden.  But failing to know when to reign in your work/hobby is the real test.  I probably lost my desire for new music due to burnout.  I’d rather it didn’t happen to games.

That’s about it.  Another day of introspection brought to a close.  It’ll come to my mind again in a year I’m sure.
I suppose the real test will come if I ever stop working with games.  But for right now… it feels like I’ve done okay.

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¹88.7 KSPC – Los Angeles/Inland Empire/Claremont California.  And a mighty fine station it remains.↩

²That would be games.  This post is actually about games, not music.↩

³Failure side note – this is one way I failed with music.  After four years working at a radio station, I only listened to music in conjunction with the station – reviewing music, or searching for new artists for my show.↩

⁴i.e. EndGame, the store I run.↩

⁵I hope I have…↩

⁶For board gamers, perhaps here… or BGG…↩

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