Caroline Turner, Opinions Editor 

I’ve recently been trying to allow myself to be bad at things. 

This is certainly a strange development for someone who has spent most of her life trying to be good at things. School has rewarded me for being good at school. Work has rewarded me for being good at work. Most of my hobbies come with the implicit expectation that, eventually, I should be good enough to post the result on Instagram. 

We don’t have any hobbies anymore. We have beginner guides, YouTube tutorials, expensive equipment, productivity apps, 30-day challenges, and on and on. We’ve managed to turn our hobbies into miniature careers. 

You don’t just bake—you make sourdough. You don’t just run—you create a training plan and join a 5k. You don’t just read—you track your books. Our hobbies have homework. 

I realized this recently when I started junk journaling again. 

If you’re unfamiliar with junk journaling, the concept is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: you take a journal and fill it with whatever scraps, stickers, photographs, receipts, magazine clippings, pieces of packaging, or other little things you happen to have lying around. There are no rules, and importantly, there is no real reason to do it. Which is exactly why I like it. 

I don’t junk journal because I want to become a professional junk journaler. I don’t have a five-year plan for my journal. I’m not hoping someone will see my journal and think it’s artistic. I do it because I like picking out pieces of paper and deciding where to put them. 

And perhaps most importantly, I don’t really care if I’m good at it. 

Somewhere along the way, we’ve gotten very good at asking what something is for. What will we get out of this? What skill will we develop? Can we turn it into a side hustle? Can we post it? Can we measure our progress? 

Even our hobbies seem to need an answer to the question, “But what are you getting out of it?” 

Junk journaling has given me a surprisingly satisfying answer: nothing. 

And I mean that in the best possible way. 

I spend enough of my life trying to accomplish things. I have deadlines. I have projects. I have emails. I have things I should read and things I should write and things I should remember to do later. I don’t need my free time to accomplish anything. 

With junk journaling, maybe my free time can just be free. 

There’s something wonderfully freeing about being bad at something when you’re not trying to become good at it. 

When I write something for work, I want it to be good. When I teach something, I want to teach it well. When I cook dinner, I prefer it to be edible. But when I’m junk journaling, there is no consequence to making a page I don’t like. 

I can tape things in crooked. I can choose the wrong piece of paper. I can make a page that looks terrible and then I can turn the page and make another one. No one is grading it. No one is looking at it. 

We don’t need more productive hobbies. We need useless ones. 

There’s value in activities that don’t improve our resumes, give us a little extra pocket money, or produce anything useful. 

Joy is enough of a reason. Joy is enough of a reason to do something. 

I don’t think my junk journal is making me a better person. It isn’t making me more productive, more employable, or more accomplished. It is, however, what makes me happy.  And I’m starting to think that’s a pretty good use of an hour. 

I’ve spent most of my life trying to be good at things. Maybe it’s okay to spend some of my time doing things because I like them. 

Maybe our hobbies don’t need homework. They just need to be fun. 

Headline image from Unsplash.