The Importance of Hobby

My Hobby is not a Job
An amateur, a hobbyist, is one who is not in it for the money. Doing something for the fun of it, for the enjoyment, and for sharing an interest with others is awesome. A hobby can be the source of many friendships and often brings great value to our lives. It can cost us money (and time) as well and sometimes we think about making some money off the hobby, just to help support our hobby. These efforts are often amateurish and not the same as marketing and producing for profit as in forming a company, but they can become work-like.
What happens when our hobby becomes a job? I can only share my own experience and what I have learned talking to and observing others, but it seems that doing so changes things significantly. Having deadlines and the resulting stress is antithetic to the concept of having fun. Things that detract from our relaxation and enjoyment of the hobby creep into the scene when we endeavor to make money at our hobby. It starts to feel like more work and less fun and may lead to us disliking something we once loved.
It is easy to imagine the prospect of having a fun way to make money, but it hasn't been my experience when doing so. I will share just a couple of examples. My first delve into monetizing my hobby came during a period of under employment and consisted of starting a painting service. Working for others, for money, is very different from working for my own enjoyment. That quickly became not fun and seriously affected my enjoyment of painting my own miniatures.
Designing and writing for publication has had similar pitfalls. I find the task of pleasing others, as well as myself, fairly easy when refereeing a game, but write it all down and put a cover on it and suddenly everyone becomes a critic. What the group enjoyed as a made-up, do-it-yourself game somehow becomes "not good enough" when offered up in a published format. (Not to mention all the writing, and rewriting, play testing and work that goes into designing makes it personally not as much fun as just running it for your friends.)
My Hobby is not a Community
Well, it is and it isn't a community. (A quick search will get you a definition of "community".) First off, a hobby can be something you do all by yourself. Speaking of the tabletop role-playing hobby specifically, yes, we share a common interest in the games we play. There is a feeling of fellowship with others that results from sharing some common goals and interests. That is where I would agree that the hobby is a community.
Where the hobby differs from a community is in terms of organization. Communities like to define themselves, those inside the community, those outside the community. The way I see the hobby is we are always looking for new players, new referees and new product designers. Communities like to organize themselves. They tend to develop leadership and rules, implicit or otherwise, taboos and so on. I don't see this as an essential part of the hobby despite the several attempts over the years various people have made to "organize" the hobby.
The hobby I see myself as being a part of is simply composed of all folks who share an interest in playing some role-playing games at a table. It is simple, unorganized and do-it-yourself enjoyment. Of course my definition of the hobby is going to differ from others, that is part of my definition! Each of us defines our own hobby.
My Hobby is Healthy Fun!
The benefits of having a hobby are many and the tabletop role-playing hobby offers me just the right mix of intellectual stimulation, creative outlet and exciting game-play. Reading about and discussing ideas connected to the game gives me lots to think about and learn from. Designing my own materials and imagining the action at the table allows me to express my creativity in writing and drawing, through verbal means and mental images. Thinking about future games gives me something to look forward to and sharing all this with others who also enjoy the hobby allows me to form many good friendships that enriches my life well beyond playing the game.
My hobby is about sharing an interest. It is about giving, and receiving from the generosity of others, but that is my own definition. Your hobby is whatever you want it to be. And that, my friend, is what makes it special.