To give a brief introduction and context, I am 30 years old, have aspergers and work as an instructional designer for a university in the UK. In my spare time, I play video games, watch anime/TV and films and browse social media.
I am fairly new to my career, but enjoy what I do nonetheless and love learning as I go along. That being said, I feel like a lot of what I do in my spare time holds me back somehow from being the professional that I aspire to be in many ways. By that, I mean in a more senior role hopefully one day!
I see a lot of other people who work in the same industry as me, who either don’t have social media as far as I know, or if they do they just have a LinkedIn or a Twitter account that is basically LinkedIn for them (i.e they retweet what their company posts out, etc.). Meanwhile, my Twitter mainly consists of retweets of video game art and the occasional shitpost.
Is it wrong to think that my hobbies (video games, anime, films, etc.) are a poor reflection on myself as a working professional? I feel like a lot of other people who are either on the same level as me career-wise, or miles ahead of me have more ‘mature’ hobbies – and that feels like a strange thing to type, but it also feels like the truth at the same time.
I honestly don’t know what constitutes a ‘mature’ hobby when I say this – but I think it stems from guilt of not being productive 24/7 (something I have talked about here previously) and perhaps taking too much of social media at face value and not seeing the bigger picture (again, something I have posted about recently) but I want to know what your advice would be; do you ever feel this guilt or like there’s something in your way that stops you from unlocking your true potential? Or like, you feel like you can’t be your authentic self while also holding down a stable job?
If you’re someone who likes to play video games, usually as a main hobby, do you feel like it reflects on what you do for a living, or just on you as a person? Ideally, I want to be able to enjoy the hobbies that I do, but not feel this sense of guilt everytime I do because I am a ‘professional’ and feel like there is a level of standard I have to achieve each day if I want to be succesful as well in terms of my career, like something is telling me in the back of my mind “You either want to be a gaming nerd, or a working professional, you can’t be both. Choose one.”