It's even more acceptable to half-ass your job.

They're paying you the minimum they can get away with, so pay them back in kind.

Are you telling me I installed Arch (btw) for no reason??

I love to draw but I have zero artist taste.
I love to paint even though it is usually ugly.

I did a few things a consider interesting but mostly pieces my friends think is made by school children until tell otherwise and I don't even keep the ones I consider ugly.
But I have fun at painting not I make a beautiful painting.
And I have fun every time I paint even when I put my ugly looking result straight into the garbage bin.

I think some people are misunderstanding what this is trying to say. It's not saying that you should always take the easy route with your hobbies. It is not saying that you shouldn't learn the "right" way to do your hobby.

It's saying that it's just a fucking hobby. It's purpose is to be enjoyed not mastered. Do it the hard way when you're feeling it. But don't force yourself to struggle because someone on the Internet said that this way is how you learn the most efficiently or get the best results.

The internet has made serial hobbying so much easier. "Back in the day", it was much harder to expand your skills, so you learned a few things really well.

Now there's more opportunity to find something that fits your style, so half-assing is really just the trial period before you move on.

As a "still a serial hobbiest", It's great.

I'm an enthusiast amateur photographer with nice DSLR and a few mirrorless cameras. And I shoot a lot on automatic. It's fine. Semiauto and manual is usually only needed if you have specific ideas about exposure.

Also you can fix soooo many mistakes in the post. When people tell me their cellphone photos look naff, I tell them to just try levels / curves / white balance tools, and those are in every photo editor. Will help a lot.

I feel this with reading.

Personally I've never understood the flex around how many books someone has read in a year. I mean if you are a fast reader/comprehend-er then you be you. Yet I feel that most people are just reading book after book so they can get to some arbitrary number by the end of an arbitrary time frame.

But, hey if setting a goal of reading x number of books in y amount of time makes you happy - fucking go for it.

Wait, there is more than one type of braid? i thought i was hot shit for knowing how to braid a girls hair.

As someone who occasionally does professional photography/ filming, the auto setting on your camera is fine if you're just snapping pics. Where you'd want manual is if you were taking a larger series of photos and wanted to apply the same effects/ processing to the batch.

me: does a thing because I like it and I get kinda not shit at it.

Everyone else: HaVe You cOnSIDErEd DoinG ThaT PRofEssIONaLLY? YOu cOULd mAKE so MUCH MOneY.!1!

me: fuck off. I have a job. I do this for me.

everyone else: Do What yOU LOve anD You'lL neVER worK A dAy IN Your life.!

me: turn your hobby into your job and you don't have a hobby anymore. There's no faster way to hate your passion than to monetize it.

Perfect is the enemy of good.

I'm a 38 yo straight dude with a potty mouth and a bad attitude. I love sewing. Idky and I'm terrible at it but it gives me the good feels so I practice as much as my brain will allow.

Also, speaking of tracing stuff. Your phone is basically a light table! You can pull up the picture on your phone and trace it. Use a light touch so you don't accidentally zoom. Computer monitors work with bigger stuff. I did that with this pigeon meme, and I'm pretty thrilled with it.

I "do astrophotography."

...I strap my phone to a telescope and I've been loving it lol

God this is so true. I teach compuster science, and I always make a point in one lecture to show the students how many tabs full of basic questions I have to open when grading their assignments. Nobody can memorize all of this, and it's so important to shake off that feeling of not being good enough just because you have to look something up.

I've been playing guitar for 25 years and I kinda suck. I've forgotten everything I know about music theory, I don't know any songs and my fingers just don't move that fast. But I enjoy coming home and making some noise for 15-20 minutes. I just move my hands around and make a lot of bad sounds until I start making a good sounding riff then I'm done.

This is the end result of no one actually understanding the notion of “practice makes perfect” and probably some other shit that kids are internalizing these days that I am not privy to.

It’s also really helpful to read again.

No one is perfect, people just get good at stuff by doing it a lot (and can also get worse if they stop doing it). So many friends of mine are always talking about doing creative stuff and how hard it is and yet they never actually just take the first step to try anything.

Hey kids, do you like violence?

Wanna see me stick nine inch nails through each one of my eyelids?

Wanna copy me and do exactly like I did?

Try 'cid and get fucked up worse than my life is?

Anyone who tells you to manually set everything in photography is silly. I took a photography class and made sure to thoroughly read a professional photographer's breakdown of my camera and how to operate it.

The only reason I've seen suggested why you should use manual mode is if you want a very specific shot that the automatic settings won't allow you to get. You know, like everything else. Automatic modes (i.e. aperture modes mainly) are there for a reason and while it's good to know how to manually set your parameters and read the light meter, you realistically don't want to be fiddling with your camera while whatever subject you want to photograph is potentially changing (for portrait or still shots its not as bad, but if you need to do any form of quick shooting you're only hampering yourself). Do I still use manual mode sometimes? Of course! I was taught how to use it and when I need it it is extremely helpful. But I typically only need it for night photography or if I want a specific effect (which can often be achieved with shutter mode but I never really use that).