I remember for the longest time, I was a real penny-pincher. Not just with money, but with everything. Time, energy, you name it. Everything had to have a point, a return. If I spent an hour on something, I wanted to see a result, something tangible. Sound familiar? A lot of us are wired that way, I think. Get ahead, save up, be productive. It’s like a mantra drilled into our heads from day one.
Then I got into this weird hobby. Completely by accident, really. Started off small, just a little curiosity. But then it... well, it kinda snowballed. And let me tell you, this thing was a black hole for time and, yeah, a bit of cash too. And for what? Nothing, really. No product to sell, no skill that would get me a promotion, nothing I could put on a resume. My old self would have been screaming bloody murder. "What’s the point?!" he’d yell inside my head, constantly.
My Old Brain Screaming
And for a good while, that's exactly what my brain did. I'd spend a whole weekend completely absorbed in this thing, loving it, and then Monday would roll around and I’d feel this awful wave of guilt. Like, "Man, I could have been doing something 'useful'." I actually tried to justify it to myself. "Oh, it's relaxing," or "It's, uh, good for fostering creativity." But deep down, those justifications felt pretty flimsy. They were just excuses, me trying to make this 'waste' fit into my old, super-productive worldview.
It was like trying to jam a square peg into a round hole. The more I tried to make it 'make sense' in the old way, the more frustrated I got. Because the honest truth was, I was doing it just… because. For the sheer hell of it. For the feeling of doing it, not for what came after it.
Then It Clicked (Sort Of)
I was moaning about this to a friend one day, you know, how I was 'wasting' so much on this apparently pointless pursuit. And they just looked at me, listened patiently, and then said something really simple, like, "So? Does it make you miserable?" And I stopped and thought, and was like, "No, actually, I kind of love it when I'm doing it." It was a weird moment. Like, I'd been waiting for permission from someone else, even though it should have been from myself all along.
That little exchange got me thinking. Seriously thinking. About all those things people do that don't 'make sense' in a purely productive, bean-counting way. You know, like lavish parties that cost a fortune, ridiculously expensive art that just hangs there on a wall, or even just acts of pure, unadulterated generosity where you expect absolutely nothing back. My old self would have scoffed. "Inefficient! Wasteful! What a bunch of nonsense!"
But then I started to see it differently. It's not always about building up, accumulating, getting more, more, more. Sometimes, it's about the spending itself, the letting go, the consumption. The sheer, glorious, sometimes even a bit destructive, act of using things up without a 'good reason' that fits on a spreadsheet.
- Like, think about a massive fireworks display. All that money, all that incredible effort, and poof! It's up in smoke and dazzling light in just a few minutes. Pointless? Or is the point precisely that it’s spectacular and fleeting and utterly for the moment?
- Or someone who pours their heart and soul, and a ton of money, into restoring some clunky old car they'll barely even drive. It’s not an investment in the financial sense, not really.
- Even things like really intense sports, pushing your body to the absolute limit, risking injury for... what exactly? A feeling? A moment of glory? A personal best?
I started to realize this whole "expenditure" thing, this non-productive spending of energy or resources, it's not some kind of bug in the human system. It might actually be a feature. It's about saying, "Hey, there's more to life than just stacking bricks higher or counting pennies in a jar." It’s about a kind of freedom, a way of showing that we're not just cogs in some giant economic machine. We can choose to burn bright, even if it's just for a moment, for no damn reason at all other than we feel like it.
This wasn't about being irresponsible all of a sudden. That’s a key thing I had to figure out for myself. It’s not about bankrupting yourself or being reckless with your life or resources. It's more about acknowledging that part of us, that fundamental part of life, that just is, without needing a five-year plan or a projected profit margin to justify its existence.
So, that "useless" hobby of mine? I still do it. And I don’t feel guilty anymore, or at least, a lot less so. I just try to enjoy the process, the 'waste' of it all, if you want to call it that. It’s my little act of defiance against the tyranny of 'always be productive'. It's my way of touching something that feels a bit more real, more alive, than just chasing the next quantifiable goal. It’s about the joy of the expenditure itself, the spending of energy, time, whatever, just because. And honestly? It's made the 'productive' parts of my life feel a bit richer too, more balanced. Funny how that works, isn't it?
