Why You Need a Passion Project

Last weekend I added a manga review section to my personal website for absolutely no reason at all, other than the fact I wanted to.

I’ve been reading a lot of manga to cope with *gestures wildly.* I might read 5+ volumes at a time, so there’s no way I’m going to add and review each one in Hardcover.app like the nonfiction books I read.

Also, many of them are ongoing, but I still wanted somewhere to review the series as a whole. Are there sites for that? Eh, probably. But as I’ve mentioned before, I prefer to own my content.

I’m not here to talk about manga.

I want to talk about what happened when I made time to create something random for the sole sake of creating something.

I have been under a massive workload over the past several months.

Last year was weird. It was hectic with my business rebrand, but it was inconsistent with client projects because everyone was flailing in a sea of uncertainty and overwhelm (I assume).

After school started, something shifted, and it’s been nonstop ever since. I half-assed my annual planning week in order to keep tabs on client projects, so I really haven’t had a break since then.

I put this newsletter on hiatus in the summer, and never got back to restarting it. The Founder Problems podcast has also been on hiatus – I don’t have the bandwidth to edit and produce this the same way¹, so we’re shifting to a no-editing model this year.

I haven’t painted anything in… forever. Or written anything longer than a couple paragraphs. All my time goes to working on client projects, being frustrated at the never-ending admin paperwork of running a business, or collapsing into a beanbag for some manga in between trying to remember if I had a plan for dinner.

TL;DR: I’m really burned out.

This past Sunday I finally caved to the frustration of not creating anything for myself, and chose to build a manga review system.

Did I have cleaning to do? Yes. Would it have been better to do something healthy, like not sit in a chair for once, or create something that wasn’t digital? Sure. But I can’t bring myself to care anymore.

Underneath all the exhaustion, my hyperfocus brain wanted to build manga reviews, so I was going to give in and build manga reviews dammit.

Nothing recharges creative batteries like a few focused hours on a pointless side project.

I was so stoked to finally build something for myself (even though it was technically similar to what I’ve been building for a client all week). But this project was for ME. It was disconnected from anyone’s else’s opinions or preferences, unrelated to income, purely for fun… it vaporized six months of burnout like Asta’s anti-magic sword.

What makes a good side project?

In a capitalist society that cares only about extracting value from human beings like cogs in a machine, rest is resistance. Therefore:

• The more pointless the project, the higher the dopamine hit.
• It’s best if the output doesn’t matter.
• Bonus points for creating something tangible IRL.²
  

I had no intention of actually making the review section live on my website initially. I just wanted to build it so I could record my thoughts before I forgot what they were.

It didn’t actually take that long and I was happy with it, so I did make it live (and making your creations public has value as a source of inspiration to others).

However, you shouldn’t have the expectation “this needs to be good” hanging over your head, or it sucks all the energy out of the room.

Doing something just because is creative anarchy.

We’ve been told to believe we don’t deserve rest. That hobbies have to generate income or they aren’t worth our time.³ So you might default to “safe” activities like listening to a brainy podcast while doing some much-needed cleaning.

That’s not a bad thing, but I’d encourage you to think bigger – more defiant. Manifest Rage Against the Machine in your passion projects.

Because those projects have unexpected value:

After staying up too late working on my random side project, I knew what the next newsletter would be – this one. More importantly, I actually wanted to write it.

I haven’t had the energy to commit to this biweekly cadence again, hence the long hiatus. It’s never for lack of ideas (I have a long list of drafts), just… exhaustion, mostly.

Making time for a pointless personal website feature breathed life into the whole thing, because it reminded me how much I enjoy creating for its own sake, and why I need to prioritize it for my own mental health.

I work on a million different projects all the time because that’s just how I’m wired. I constantly have ideas. I have to build stuff. Amanda Natividad recently wrote about “loving everything” and that hit hard.

If I neglect that idea creation compulsion too long, I feel like the houseplant in the guest room that hasn’t been watered in months.

I love building stuff for clients, but it’s simply not the same. I also lack the freedom to experiment fully. I’ve never needed to build a review system for a client, but now it’s something else I can say I’ve done, all because I’m obsessed with One Punch Man.

What’s one activity you could do this weekend, just because?

What if you went to the coffeeshop not for a client meeting (GASP), but to work on that novel? What if you did that fun DIY project that’s kind of intimidating, just to see what happens? What if you started a painting with zero expectations… an experiment with mark-making, collage or an acrylic pour, perhaps?

Seriously, go make something this weekend. You’ll feel better.

Footnotes:
¹ A single podcast episode takes roughly 4 hours to edit, then distribute. Assume 3 hours for recording every other week, and we’re talking 20 hours a month. I don’t have time for this. Our tentative solution is to stop editing entirely and train an intern on how to publish episodes so I can hand this off entirely.
² Incidentally, my husband took a knife-making class this past weekend. I encouraged him to do it, and maybe it subconsciously gave me the energy to make something too.
³ I want to acknowledge this is a privileged statement; there are many, many people who do not have the luxury of non-revenue generating activities.