Do you need a creative hobby?

For many years I’ve struggled to sustain a creative hobby. This isn’t for a lack of trying, I’ve given a good nudge to drawing, writing, piano, music production, ring making, pottery, and others I can’t remember. The effort has varied from a single pottery class to 2 years of adult piano lessons. The problem is that they never seem to stick, I can reach a flow state but the friction of starting a session always feels high.

This is in contrary to other hobbies I have which are challenging, and/or rewarding, but don’t result in something being “created”.

Like seemingly every software engineer I’m into bouldering. It’s a multi faceted love and I almost never need to “force” myself to do it. It just something I love to do and have been doing it roughly once per week for 4+ years. On top of that I love movies, music, and video games - not just as mindless entertainment but as a way to experience interesting stories and emotions expressed in interesting ways.

In saying all this, it feels like something is missing. I’m drawn to a hobby that produces something. A hobby with an output I can share with the world and look back on. I want a paper trail of my improvement in a craft. At the same time, I’m not sure if this is a feeling I authentically feel or if it’s been instilled in me by online creators that coincidentally feel that creative expression is a necessary part of the human experience.

It might be self evident but I’m giving writing another nudge. In some sense it’s a hobby I always finding myself returning too, but whenever I do, the enormous friction of it always seems to push me away eventually. As someone that scraped though English in high school, writing something that isn’t terrible is an uphill battle. In saying that, there are so many thoughts that I have swirling around in my head that I want to synthesise into something concrete, and then share it.

Who knows, maybe there is an event horizon with writing where with just a little more effort I can reach. Feel free to follow along the journey and also let me know your thoughts as to if you need a hobby with a creative output?