Pen-Elayne on the Web

Money for Hobbies and Your Checks for Free

I guess I've always spent money on hobbies. I lost track of how many stamps I used to buy back when they were 6¢ each and I had 150 penpals. Back in my INSIDE JOKE days I'd budget X-amount every six weeks for printing and mailing 200 copies of 32 tiny-type pages that I knew I'd never begin to recoup with the nominal $1.50 subscription I charged. I've thrown cash after apazines, videotapes, comics, all the stuff I like doing. Because that's what you do with disposable income, you spend it on things that give you personal satisfaction, without expectation of reimbursement. In my opinion, hobbies are for fun, not for making money.

Now, that's not to say people don't make money from their hobbies. I'm told there are folks who turn profits on all sorts of writing I've done for free, from comics reviews to, yes, blogging. Hey, if they can find people willing to pay them to do what readers can get elsewhere for nothing, on the basis of their experience or unique voice or whatever, more power to them. If someone wants to pay to publish me, that's cool. And if you happen like my writing here and in your undying gratitude you want to shower me with gifts, that's cool too. Weird, but cool.

But asking folks to pay for my favorite years-long hobby, writing in a one-to-many venue, when at long last I'm able to do so without spending a penny? Heck no. That's why I've added the note under the PayPal button on my sidebar. I've never done a single PayPal transaction, and have no idea if the button even does what it's supposed to; it's there mostly for convenience and just in case. And that's why I will continue to tsk-tsk at bloggers who blatantly request their readers to monetarily support their hobbies, no matter how politely. Even people I otherwise respect and admire. Nobody's making us blog, nobody's pressing us into hard labor. We blog for the love of it, for the ego boost, because we want to share, because maybe we'll go bonkers if we don't, any number of reasons. And if we choose to go with a service that isn't free, that's our choice and our responsibility to allot the necessary funds, not the responsibility of our readers.

Don't mind me, I'm just letting off some steam.