In pursuit of being uncultured

“Don’t monetise your hobbies,” has become somewhat of a mantra this decade.

I was recently asked what I would do when my pursuit of writing and the arts began to feel like “work”. I can’t remember what I’d said at the time but, in retrospect, my answer should’ve been that it already is work.

Because work isn’t necessarily only about financial gain.

My adolescence and early twenties were dedicated to ploughing through lists of what the world deemed “highbrow” movies and literature—the Oscar winners, the Victorians, and the ground-breaking scholars. I actually don’t regret the hours spent soldiering through works that I personally found to be agonising just for the sake of being cultured. Because, along the way, I found some new favourites—Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and Black Girl by Ousmane Sembène—and others that sparked unlikely connections.

What I do regret, however, is the time spent guilt-tripping myself into sacrificing personal pleasure in the name of intellectual enlightenment.

So, I’ve dedicated the past couple months to rekindling leisure. I’ve been watching terribly rated movies because a favourite actor is in it and marathoning shows because they make me laugh. I’ve picked up books for the escapism rather than the knowledge and revisited stories for nostalgia without telling myself it’s a waste of time.

Hustle culture is inescapable. It’s in the glorification of busyness and the relentless chase of progress even in the places where we find joy. But growth isn’t always a progression. Sometimes growth is returning to old comforts in service of self-love.

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