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nothing worth doing is worth doing badly

sun, 01 nov 2026, 09:16pm utc

alternative title: i don't understand the concept of {fun,hobbies}

my former partner's brother is one of the goalkeepers for a local football reserve team (the soccer kind). has been for all his life. at some point, i decided to attend these games and support from the sidelines, mostly because my life is empty and boring, so i have to latch onto every little thing that promises a hint of novelty, but also because i'm generally interested in watching him play for some reason. it's not going very well. his team has recently broken into a higher league, still at city level, but still. for the entire duration of this season so far, his team has been getting dismantled by every opponent they have faced

the first of his recent games, he lost 1:7. after going without a win for four more games after that, the team finally secured two draws in a row, firmly placing them last in the standings with two whole points. the season will terminate mid december

that second draw they secured today. the aforementioned brother did not play, but attend i did regardless. while watching the plays unfold, i couldn't help but ask myself a question i have so far completely failed to engage with all my life: how do adults drag themselves out of their warm beds on cold fall sundays week after week to keep playing horrendous football for a nondescript local team that will most likely drop back down a league?

i struggle with the concept of the hobby. when i think about who i am as a person, i can't identify any one thing i'm any good at, mostly because i don't do anything. never have. my singular hobby has always been to sit in front of a screen and play computer games which i have also never been particularly good at. when i think about doing something that would mean anything to me, my stomach fills with dread because i cannot stand the idea of being bad at something before maybe getting good years down the line

one of my least favorite pastimes that i tried turning into a regular hobby back in 2014 is chess. i was facing significant time away from the computer due to acute homelessness followed by acute poverty for essentially a decade as i tried to repair my mess of a life. suddenly, all i had was my phone, so while sitting at some counselor's office, i started playing chess against the computer on my cheap ass android smartphone. it was a fairly spontaneous affair. the only prior exposure to the game of kings was a brief visit to my high school's chess club when i was about 12, organized by my ethics teacher for some reason i still can't fathom. apart from that, the only thing i knew was that despite the game being dead, world championship matches garnered a lot of attention on streaming platforms which seemed odd to me

at the time i started playing, i was living in some youth shelter in stuttgart and didn't really have any friends that were up for anything but daydrinking (well, nightdrinking i suppose), so i decided to send the local chess club a message to secure myself an escape from it all. i'm fairly certain that this was the first time i had interfaced with the concept of the hobby, as a fully conscious person at the ripe age of 19

the person i talked to on the phone was ecstatic about helping me get started. i'm fairly certain they were bleeding money because the only people who cared about chess in 2014 were old people, and they were dying, so local talent was desperately needed. unfortunately, i found myself unable to provide this talent. after picking up a chessboard for studying at home and a book the guy recommended, i discovered that i was really bad at understanding concepts. i vividly recall reading a sentence in the last third of the book about some move enabling another seemingly unrelated move, and trying and failing to wrap my head around what the hell the author was babbling on about made me so angry that i decided to just give the board back and throw the book away which is exactly what i did

this is not the entire truth as i also spent one evening at the chess club, trying to get to know the other players and getting my first lesson in. the coach, an old man, put a position on the board and asked me for sensible moves. there was no context, no further background info on what exactly the theme of the position was, just "what would you do here?". i was familiar with the concept of tactics, forcing moves that immediately gain material or a winning edge, but every move i could name, the coach discarded in a way that made me feel really stupid. like i was somehow supposed to just understand without learning how to understand. eventually, i just stared at the position but stopped giving moves which caused the guy to grow impatient and say "i don't think this makes much sense" out loud before destroying the position. i didn't connect with any other people either as i was the only new guy, so it felt like if i wanted to learn chess, i was on my own which helped me make the decision to abandon the game

chess hasn't really exited my life. every once in a while, i get an itch to start playing again. "maybe i'll get better this time" i would think before going on a horrible losing streak that would inspire me to cancel my chess.com membership. every time, without fail. still, i play old magnus carlsen titled tuesday streams on my phone when i try to fall asleep but need some background noise, and i still like the concept of the game, but i just can't get over the cruelty of being bad and getting stomped over and over and over again without any sign of improvement

you see, chess turns out to be the cruelest of mistresses because she also reminds you of the fact that you are simply too late. don't ask for what because the answer is everything. you can only get really good at chess if you start playing at a tender age, usually around 6, and then keep grinding for multiple decades, turning the hobby into your existence. this is true to an extent for practically every meaningful pastime i could imagine myself doing, but it's especially true for chess

i don't try new things very often. when i do, like brazilian jiu jitsu, i have to face the harsh reality. the cool fantasy i have built of the thing in my head is not going to be my actual life. for bjj, this means that i will not be craig jones or gordon ryan. i will instead be a hopeless fool struggling with the most basic of concepts and feeling awful while bumbling my way through them. never do i feel like i'm having fun under any circumstance. how can it be fun to be bad at something? i want to be good at the thing to have fun with the thing, so i am learning the thing but it turns out that i hate learning the thing because being so obviously bad at something really sucks. my coach is a younger sunny boy who tells me to detach myself from the outcome and just enjoy the thing, but i have no idea what that means. i cannot on a deeper level comprehend that sentiment because i am not programmed to comprehend it

there's also another issue. compartmentalizing and stashing away the crushing psychological weight of a typical learning journey taking many years of consistent practice is exceptionally difficult for me, mainly because i'm also really bad at doing the same thing regularly and consistently. i will grow bored of everything, and this process of cycling through brief periods of interest in things is super painful because it makes me feel like i can never arrive. i can never find the one hobby that i can enjoy without any expectations because, without the fun, nothing worth doing is worth doing badly. i'm forever a drifter in a world that rewards consistency. nothing i will ever do or try will remain in my life, and i will never be good at anything as a result

so, how does an adult drag themselves out of their warm bed on cold fall sundays week after week to keep playing horrendous football for a nondescript local team that will most likely drop back down a league? i rightly don't know. i know for a fact that some of these players are competitive. they yell and get frustrated when things don't go their way, so they must be feeling the weight of the losing streak after climbing up a league, right? perhaps there's nothing to understand here. they just feel like playing football is fun, and this is the place they ended up doing it in, so they just keep doing it there. i just wish i could relate