My dad is into snowmobiling. He is into snowmobiling in the way I am into Pokemon. He subscribes to about 4583720 different snowmobiling magazines, has two nice mountain sleds which he likes to customize and modify, and just upgraded his enclosed 5-sled trailer to a massive all-aluminum monstrosity. The man loves his snowmobiling.
Now don't get me wrong, I like snowmobiling too. It's fun. However, in my opinion, it is more trouble than it's worth. Take the amount of work it takes to buy and maintain nice equipment, multiply by the amount of work it takes to pack and load it all up, integrate by the 13 hour drive to and from the mountains. While I'll admit throwing a snowmobile around powder bowls and powering up 45-degree, 100-foot hills is great fun, it's not worth it to me. It gets boring too quickly. It's just too much work, and it's not even close actually. Dad, on the other hand, would probably make the trip every weekend, or every day if he could.
This echoes my opinion of several of dad's hobbies. Flying a plane is kind of cool, but not even close to worth the hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars' worth of training required. Motorcycle trips are fun, but the exhilarating curves are too few and far between to be worth the hours of cold, straight, boring highway it takes to get to them. Fancy food is nice, but it's not worth the entire afternoon shot by shopping, cooking, and cleaning. As with snowmobiling, Dad probably thinks I'm crazy, and would pour countless more hours into these pastimes if given the chance.
What causes this disparity of values of work vs. fun? Is it just because Dad has a better work ethic than me, and doesn't attach as much inherent negative value to his hobbies' prep work? I used to think so, because he definitely has a better work ethic than me. But I changed my mind when I extended my thinking to one of my brother's favorite hobbies: paintball. My brother thinks nothing of the huge amounts of prep work and clean up associated with paintball, and he's definitely lazier than me.
There are all kinds of inspirational quotes saying something along the lines of "anything worth doing is hard work", and I don't disagree with that. But many things NOT worth doing are hard work too, and everyone seems to have a different set of values to determine what is too much work, and what is totally worth it. From now on, those will be my official designations. I will label activities or pursuits either "too much work" or "totally worth it".
Here are a few examples:
TOO MUCH WORK:
-Snowmobiling
-Flying
-Motorcycling
-Cooking fancy dinners
-Paintballing
-IV Breeding Pokemon
-Jazz
TOTALLY WORTH IT:
-A decent sandwich
-Playing hockey
-EV training Pokemon
-Digging snow caves
-Playing an instrument well
-Waterskiing or wakeboarding
-Blogging
