There are lots of reasons to continue or start a hobby even if you cannot become good enough to make it your full-time job. But even as I write that, I don’t really believe it deep down. I believe it for you. I think it’s a great idea for everyone else to do things that bring them joy and have no other benefits. But not for me.

I have always struggled to do activities for fun. Maybe it’s capitalism, a personality default, being a Virgo, or maybe it’s just who I am at my deep sticky core. But even as a child, I struggled to see the importance of anything that could not further my goals. Why take dance lessons if I wasn’t as good as my sister? I’d never be a professional ballerina. Why go to an art college if I knew by then that I had neither the family money nor the natural talent to ascend to the heights of the Zwirner galleries? Why continue to play softball if I was only good enough for a second-tier D-I college? Throughout my childhood, I quit all of these things, plus dozens of others I cannot remember, in pursuit of some fated hobby or career that I would naturally be the best at.

All of these decisions, I recognize as an adult, are evidence of brain worms. They’re the same brain worms that made me quit piano lessons in the first place. And even though I am 20 years older now, I realized when Dayna asked that question that I hadn’t bothered to treat the worms at all. The worms made me successful and productive. Those things, we are taught to believe, are more important than feeling happy, fulfilled, or interested in your own life.

—Learning To Play Piano When There Is No Recital [archive]

This is so me that it hurts. But how to really come to—and believe—the realization the author does in the second section of the piece?