Hobbies are something you do for fun. Things that are not really required of you and yet you enjoy doing for whatever reason. A job on the other hand is what earns you money, it is what puts food on the table, but most of the time it is neither fun or exciting.

Jobs in most cases are soul crushing, energy depleting, demoralizing, and degrading, but people still do it to make money, out of necessity. A business is the same but in a much grandeur scale, because now, you are not just thinking about going to work to earn a fixed income. Now you are thinking if you would even earn anything from your business every single day.

The TL;DR is: If you convert the "fun" activity into a money making activity, you're going to hate that activity.

I have concluded that people may come up with different answers to this question based on experience, so let me share mine with you.

I love making websites. I love designing websites. I love thinking how to make features work on websites that I designed and created. It was like that for me for a long time since I was 12 up until I graduated college with a degree in Computer Science.

I had a taste of real programming work during my internship in college. It wasn't really fun or exciting but I shrugged it off thinking real world job must be much more exciting than that.

A year later, after graduating from college, I started working as an actual back-end developer in the corporate world, and then.... it sucks.

The pay was entry level, as expected, but over the 2 years of working there I wasn't even encountering anything that would improve my skills. I was always self-studying when I get home from work, but the things that I've learned I have never used in my actual day job.

This is not making me happy, this is exactly the boring non-exciting soul crushing, depressing, monotonous feeling I had when I had my internship. There is no personal growth for me in that work.

I then decided to leave my job to pursue my own venture off creating my own company, specifically my own social networking tech company. I contemplated for six months if I should leave my work and even got to the point of getting so depressed and burnt out just thinking about my work for six months straight, and then eventually I decided to move on and pursue my idea.

I created a social networking site similar to facebook back in 2017 with similar features thinking this is it, this would be the next big thing. I'll be a fucking billionaire bro.

Nope.

A few friends and family checked it out for a few minutes when I showed it to them. A few random people online checked it out for a few minutes after I promoted it online. And then.... nothing.

This wasn't the only time I tried.. A year after my failed attempt, I created another site, a blog site for music fans. I wrote articles and posted different tutorials and promoted it relentlessly in all social media platforms. I persisted, I persevered, I learned so much and did so much. I programmed all of it, and wrote all of the contents. And still... nothing.

I was running out of money to spend for the hosting and I couldn't find any investors who were interested in my ideas.

I created another website an e-commerce website that should get a lot of visitors, right? Still.. nothing. Months of hard work and persistent promotion and sleepless nights. Just gone.

I also created small programming projects here and there on the side while all of those were happening. Didn't really earn me enough to live off of.

By this point I already hate programming. I just hate thinking about codes by then, because it's the only practical skill that I have and yet it isn't earning me anything.

It was only by learning it the hard way that I realized that, turning your hobby into a business would make you hate your hobby.

No. I cannot speak for everyone and I only speak from my own experience.

What I can tell you tho, is that if you have a stable job with a stable monthly income and you have a hobby that you want to turn into a business, don't just leave your job like I did.

I've been in very low points in life because of financial instability and it has led me to spiral into depression and have failed to take care of my health. Don't be like me. Learn from my mistakes.

I am not trying to scare anyone but I just wanted it to be out there for anyone who is in the same shoes that I was back then. You need very careful planning especially financially. Like one youtube comment says "Turning your hobby into a job is the best way to kill your enjoyment."

I hope this post finds you in the right time, and if not, then I hope it lifts you up so that you can continue and keep going.

To all those who are trying to turn their hobbies into a business, Goodluck. You're gonna need it.