Childhood’s End

Think of the thing you liked doing most as a child. Do you still do that anymore? Why don’t you do it anymore? One of the things I always really enjoyed doing as a kid was building and tinkering with things. I was always taking things apart and I loved to build with legos and put Bionicles together. As I got older, there was a social pressure to stop doing these things. They are filed under the banner of "kids' hobbies"  and if you keep doing them as an adult you are looked at in a negative light. 

There is a strong social stigma that adults need to be productive. You have to have a good job, you have to work hard, you have to make a lot of money, and your time has to be spent doing things that are productive. If you do anything that isn’t productive you are viewed as lazy. Video games were seen like this until more recently. Parents saw their kids playing video games as a waste of time. I remember as a kid hearing my friend's parents say, “When you get older you won’t have time for this video game nonsense.” and as an adult I can emphatically say that is false.

When I was younger adults always wore this “busy badge” with pride. They seemed to see their life as a constant climb. Everything they did had to be towards an end and anything that distracted from being productive wasn’t acceptable. They seemingly took pride in not being able to do things to relax or have fun. They always lamented their inability to have time to relax or do anything fun. It created a picture of adulthood as this wasteland of work and responsibilities where you aren’t allowed to have any fun. 

I think our generation is definitely making steps towards changing this outlook. We are taking more time for ourselves and not letting our life be consumed with this battle to be better than everyone else. We have realized that relaxation is productive. Taking the time to do the things you enjoy produces happiness for you. It allows you to release stress and ultimately makes you more productive when you are doing whatever it is that you need to do. 

However, I think we do still constrict what people are allowed to enjoy. There is still this idea that some things are too childish for people to enjoy. While I understand this to a certain extent, as some things could be concerning to continue doing as an adult, the idea that some hobbies are too childish is generally harmful. 

I think to a certain extent we inflict this on ourselves as well. We assume how people are going to react to something based on our own beliefs and sometimes that just isn’t the case. For me that came when I was trying to bring myself to build all the bionicles that I never got to finish building as a kid. I kept telling myself that people would think it's too childish and no one would be interested. It is very possible that is the case but no one had said anything like that and I had no reason to believe that.

This weekend, we were celebrating my nephew’s birthday and he had a toy that they were struggling to put together. He asked if I could help him with it so I sat down and started working on it.  I engaged something in my brain that hadn’t been engaged in a long time. There was a problem in front of me and I needed to assess the situation, figure out the solution, and implement the solution. Then, once I figured that out, I just had to follow the instructions to finish putting it together which was also fun. Before you say anything, following instructions to snap together a plastic toy is just way more fun than putting furniture together from a box. 

I think this process of trying to solve a problem in a physical medium is why I want to get into woodworking and building things around the house. It is a challenge that I have to overcome. I get to look at a problem, develop a solution, and then build that solution. I am hoping that it will give me the creative outlet that the blog, podcast, business, and YouTube channel can’t quite satisfy. I am hoping to start that soon and will probably be making a post about that specifically once I start. 

Putting together this toy also reminded me how fun it is to just build little things like that just for the fun of it. I think that is what makes it more fun than assembling furniture. Putting together furniture is more of a chore. It is something that has to get done, while putting together the bionicles is something that I am just doing to have fun. I think I am going to start doing that as well. I will be posting updates about that project but, as they probably won’t be enough content for a full post, I will be handling those differently. I will probably create a gallery for them and be posting to social media. If people think it's childish, oh well, I will be having fun doing it.