I often find myself busy in most cases; whether I am designing, coding, reading something, researching, or watching YouTube - I am occupied almost every time. I always have a hobby I tend to monetize.

It all started with design. I started off creating cartoon illustrations of my friends; I considered it a fun activity. Then I went to charging R50 per cartoon because I needed airtime to buy mobile data to access the internet everyday. I then found myself buying online courses on Udemy to learn how to design and use Adobe Illustrator efficiently.

From creating cartoons, I decided to go on a Graphic Design route and design logos for small businesses. And that was my start on monetizing a hobby; it later became a side hustle and then a job. I wasn’t doing it for fun or for my own amusement or to impress my friends. I was doing it to create some money on the side, crazy!

Hobbies are meant to be fun and keep you away from work-related stuff, something that keeps you away from you.

Now I know that I can basically turn any hobby into some sort of money-making medium. I want to start a hobby that wouldn’t allow me to do any of those; skateboarding. I have been looking at a lot of skateboarding videos on YouTube, and I swear that looks fun.

So the lesson here is to avoid monetizing your hobbies. You will end up bored and consider the fun stuff “work”.