We Have No Hobbies

I was in yoga this morning when I started to wonder how many yoga classes I’d completed in the last 7 years since I started practicing. I have yoga clothes now. Multiple mats. One exclusively for travel. I have clothes dedicated to my practice. I have a system. I am rarely in a situation where I want to practice and cannot access the tools.

The studio I attend has been nudging me towards teacher training since I started. I’ve considered it. I truly believe that more Black people would practice if they didn’t have to suffer through Las Vegas *ooncha* music in a downward dog. I’ve dreamt of the beautiful playlists I’d curate with D’Angelo, Erykah Badu, and Jill Scott. How I’d launch savasana with a handwritten guided meditation that would send them off into the best day available to their imagination. My themes would be aligned with the moon and the stars. Essential oils would greet my yogis upon entrance. My class would be so consistently packed, it’d be waitlisted.

I resist teaching because I know the truth:

If I start teaching yoga, yoga will become a job.

Income. And it’s the only refuge I have.

Living is so expensive that we’ve been conditioned to believe that if we’re good at something, we should be making money from it. In fact, I had a mentor tell me that if 3 people ask you about the same thing, you should form a business around it.

And because time is finite, and inflation is boundless, it’s difficult to disagree.

With all the talk about passive income, compound interest, and the orange man coming for student loans with no breaks, it makes sense. Our parents bought houses for $70K. If you want a house at that price point now you’d have to order it from Amazon and have it delivered to somebody else’s house who paid $1.7 million.

So, we don’t have hobbies.

We don’t have time to play. To explore. To figure things out. The energy is rise and grind. Team no sleep. Everybody is suddenly capable of running a company and being a boss. And don’t even get me started on the business of informal teaching where anybody can launch a (trap) ‘university.’ I think it annoys me because I started it. I distinctly remember the day *Snob Life UNIVERSITY* slid from my lips in a meeting with my then boss. I knew to call it ‘university’ because I had attended one. I knew a university was distinguished above a college because universities offer graduate degrees. Colleges don’t. Plus, universities sound cute. And at Snob Life, we were selling cute.

How much ‘merch’ have you bought to ‘support’ your ‘friend’s’ ‘business’?

Are we really getting ahead or just passing the same $10 in a circle? Are we designers because we always wanted to print cheap screen tees and sell them overpriced? Is it capitalism? Or is it survival? Because Lord knows, the regular jobs aren’t enough anymore.

You need some money to go with that money.

How did those people in *Cheers* have time to sit at a bar that long after work?

I’m off topic. It would be a miracle if we could indulge in recreation.

I could keep going but I don’t have time. I can’t just keep writing because I enjoy it. I gotta go make some money.