Editor’s Note: All opinion section content reflects the views of the individual author only and does not represent a stance taken by The Collegian or its editorial board.

It’s 2019, and the bullet journal community is thriving. The vibrant journal proliferates across YouTube, and my artistic side is enraptured. Instantly, I head to the nearby Michaels and pick out a brand new journal, alongside a fresh set of brush pens and whatever fun pattern of washi tape I fancy.

My first bullet journal is messy, cute, unorganized, clean and everything in between. It beats with passion, unadulterated by the need to make it obsessively clean and perfect to prying eyes.

I didn’t care what others thought; I was just happy putting ink to paper.

Merriam-Webster defines a hobby as “a pursuit outside one’s regular occupation engaged in especially for relaxation.” Notice the emphasis on relaxation. This is how hobbies were always meant to be: devoid of competition and individually yours.

Starting in childhood, it is common to almost automatically fall into the footsteps of competitiveness. My toy car is better than yours; I bet I can beat you in a race; let’s see who gets the best exam score. There’s a thrill to competition that drives people to be better and push harder.

But that thrill is reserved for a specific time and place. Competition has driven societies into formation and ruin. The relentless push to climb to the top and amass the most wealth, or acquire the most fame — whatever the trophy looks like to you — is exhausting.

Occupations are inherently competitive. To be displaced from our occupations and feel relaxed while doing a hobby means hobbies must also be displaced from the competition. However, I fear we have imbued the spirit of war into our room of tranquility.

Performative hobbies have caught wildfire in recent years. Sourdough baking, crocheting, gardening, race car model-making, running — the list is endless. What was once a space to connect with fellow artisans has now fueled a secondary ring of competition.

Additionally, these performative hobbies often have the tendency to perpetuate consumerism. Newcomers rush to buy the hottest and latest tools, only to later find them collecting dust in closets after realizing it’s not their avenue. Then a new year begins, another trend comes around and the cycle repeats.

It’s now 2020, and everyone’s on social media. I’ve graduated from simplistic bullet journaling to a hybrid of calligraphy, scrapbooking and perfectionist journalism. I’m innocently sharing my creations for whoever stumbles upon my account. How naive.

Ten followers turned into hundreds, and suddenly, the pressure was palpable. The beauty of my journals had a quantifiable metric to measure against, and the numbers didn’t lie. They were beautiful indeed, but when I found myself spending eight hours in painstaking agony constructing a page I couldn’t care less about, I knew my passion had been lost somewhere on the way.

The unfortunate side effect of having the whole world as your audience is the incapability of posting anything besides perfection. And unfortunately, it is easy to habitually fall into comparison and competition, shoving our hobbies into the perfect frame to be quantified and examined.

I still have some stationery relics that I bought out of impulse, convinced each were the next-best item, as the trends insisted so. There’s nothing inherently wrong with them, but there’s no heart behind it. I fiddle with the highlighters, stickers and obscure trinkets, wondering how to reclaim my passion.

It is important to realize that no one cares about how your loaf doesn’t look as picture worthy as Mr. Baked-Sourdough-Since-The-Womb’s does. All that matters is that it tastes delicious, fills the stomach and that you created it.

Life is already overrun by the worries and stressors of our fast-paced society. Slow down. Relish the paint stroke, the smell of cherry turnovers or the tying of shoelaces. This is the only space where a performance isn’t mandatory. Honor and cherish that.

Reach Carmel Pan at letters@collegian.com or on social media @RMCollegian.