The Strange Hour Between Eras: Work, Value, and the Rise of the Hobbyist
We live in a time where everything feels like it’s both ending and beginning at once. The familiar rhythms of work and purpose — long promised by the ideal of employment — are unraveling before our eyes.
The End of the Old Employment Promise
For decades, employment was framed as the path to fulfillment, identity, social belonging, and monetary stability — which, for many (or most in due time), isn't even a given anymore.
Jobs increasingly fail to deliver what people need. They drain rather than energize. The silent epidemic of burnout is no longer hidden. “Quiet quitting” — doing only what’s strictly required — is becoming the norm. Many are waiting for the opportunity to come along, but it rarely does.
The old narrative is broken. The workplace is no longer a source of purpose for the majority, but a site of alienation.
The Shift Into the Hobbyist Space
Yet, paradoxically, productivity and creativity have not disappeared. They’ve migrated.
Increasingly, the real work — the work that fulfills and energizes — is happening outside traditional jobs. It’s in the hobbies, side projects, communities, and passion pursuits. The rise of hobbyist creators, makers, coders, and thinkers is proof that people want to create and contribute meaningfully — they just can’t find that space in their employment.
This shift challenges everything we thought about productivity. The lines blur between leisure and labor, work and play.
The Missing Piece: New Organizational Structures
If the future lies in hobbyist-driven creation, then what’s missing? The structures. The scaffolding that turns fragmented passion into collective power.
Without new models of organization, coordination, and value exchange, this creative energy will remain scattered, informal, and undervalued. We risk perpetuating cycles of under-recognition and burnout — just in new forms.
But if we build these structures — networks that support decentralized collaboration, communities that respect autonomy and contribution, economic models that reward meaningful creation — then we can make this new mode of productivity the new normal.
A Call to Action
We stand at a crossroads. We can watch as the old systems crumble, or we can be architects of what comes next. If we want more than silent quitting and waiting, if we want a world where meaningful work is available on our own terms, then we have to create it.
The tools, the people, and the passion are here. Now, let’s build the frameworks to make it real.
🦣 Find me on Mastodon: @thilosch@mastodon.social