Favorite photo I took in 2024. It re­minds me that spring is soon.

For most of my adult life, when asked, I al­ways said that I don’t have any hob­bies. Intuitively, I al­ways felt that this is some kind of trick­ery — what does it even mean to have hob­bies? Usually it means do­ing stuff reg­u­larly and un­pro­fes­sion­ally. That de­f­i­n­i­tion con­fuses me even more. I mean, why would I do some­thing reg­u­larly and not con­sider do­ing it well enough to be called pro­fes­sional? Which is in it­self a tricky word. Later, when I learned crit­i­cal the­ory, it turned out that this trick is from cap­i­tal­ism. From the sep­a­ra­tion of la­bor and leisure time. And it also con­fuses me greatly to this mo­ment. However, true, from ex­pe­ri­ence be­ing in my 30s I at least un­der­stand how other peo­ple treat it. Sometimes it seems that every­one gets it. But this is some­what not so true for artis­tic prac­tices. Which, at the same time, helps men­tally to sus­tain the va­lid­ity of your ac­tiv­i­ties while adding more ex­ter­nal pres­sure telling you that if you don’t do it for money and ca­reer, you’d bet­ter not do it if it’s not leisure.

If you don’t quite fol­low crit­i­cal dis­course, I mean here specif­i­cally that cap­i­tal­ism de­val­ues non-cap­i­tal­ist ac­tiv­i­ties, i.e. ac­tiv­i­ties out­side of the buy­ing/​con­sum­ing and pro­duc­ing/​sell­ing chain. Doing stuff for the sake of them­selves or for other non-cap­i­tal­ist val­ues forces them in gen­eral per­cep­tion into the cat­e­gory of do­ing them for your­self, and that some­how means leisure or hobby. Hobby there­fore is hard­ened leisure, or leisure with pe­cu­liar­i­ties. There is much more to say on this, as one could say “yeah, I agree, what if I do cer­tain things for fun?” And as hard as I would like to say “yeah!”, I could­n’t get over my­self, as what I should have said is “oh man, it de­pends.” Capitalism has ad­vanced and many “fun things” are un­paid work in dis­guise. Like farm­ing en­gage­ment with reels, TikToks, etc. Attention is sort of a cur­rency, but only sort of, as you can’t re­ally pay rent with views or time spent.

Anyway, my whole life I treat things I do with cer­tain dig­nity; I try not to be­lit­tle them even when I’m a rookie. If I do some­thing, I con­sider my­self in a rel­a­tively same po­si­tion at least from the start as the per­son who does it “professionally.” Of course there are many things in which I suck tremen­dously. But even if I con­tinue do­ing such ac­tiv­i­ties, I’m try­ing not to wall my­self into “hobbyist” or some­thing.

So it was un­til re­cently I got prob­a­bly my first hobby in a con­ven­tional sense. Chess. Also, me and chess — it’s a strange duo. I played chess when I was 7 – 9 with my grandpa. But he stopped play­ing with me right there; I don’t re­ally know why. I feel like he lost in­ter­est in chess. As it was more than 20 years al­ready and I know for a fact that he does not play. But he was re­ally good. He was not a grand­mas­ter, but he was “a chess can­di­date,” which is also some lo­cal chess ti­tle right be­fore grand­mas­ter. I ac­tu­ally wish I could go back in time and play with him more.

But play­ing chess with him was hard. And it’s not my trans­formed mem­o­ries of that. That ex­ists, too, but it’s ei­ther I was not smart enough back then, or he was not re­ally good at teach­ing. Basic rules were all right. It’s just more on strate­gies. Whatever he taught me, I felt like I still did­n’t know shit and chess seemed like an end­less sea of un­known. Little had I known that chess is an end­less sea of un­known, es­pe­cially was back then com­pared to 2026. Grandpa taught me stuff like “ladder check­mate” and I be­lieve also tried to teach me other endgame set­tings, but it was not that in­tu­itive. Maybe he saw that I was stressed and frus­trated and we switched to check­ers. It was much more en­joy­able and fun.

Two years ago, dur­ing my end­less forced trav­els, I — who never got a re­ally good sleep­ing sched­ule, es­pe­cially dur­ing win­ter — found chess videos on YouTube. It started with some vi­ral videos about the “Queen’s Gambit” Netflix se­ries, and chess play­ers would re­view or com­ment on the shown games. Then I re­al­ized that chess was get­ting a gi­ant in­flux of new play­ers be­cause of the se­ries, and chess YouTubers who were small and un­known, some of them hav­ing se­vere anx­i­ety about their fu­ture and abil­ity to pay bills, were pushed to the top. Levy from Gotham Chess chan­nel scored 5 mil­lion. Many top play­ers like Magnus or Hikaru be­came ac­tual celebri­ties, not just in a niche elit­ist in­tel­lec­tual land­scape but wider. So I started to ca­su­ally watch games af­ter learn­ing the lore: hi­er­ar­chy, per­son­al­i­ties, re­la­tions, scan­dals, tour­na­ments, must-known facts, etc.

Then there were a few games I watched where I had sort of a sparkle mo­ment; I felt the beauty of moves, al­though still very in­tu­itively and with the help of com­ments from a host. But it still looked com­plex to me. Chess is a whole big world. And I felt like I don’t want to ac­tu­ally study. I don’t want to learn it de­lib­er­ately as I learned be­fore: lan­guages, the­o­ries, cod­ing, film­ing. It’s not that I con­sider my­self an ace in those things, but still, learn­ing them re­quires dis­ci­pline and com­mit­ment. And I don’t want to com­mit to chess.

Then I saw a se­ries of videos on “chess speedrun.” It’s when a high-ranked player starts from 0 and com­ments on every move they make. And sur­pris­ingly, it was en­joy­able and I felt that I ac­tu­ally al­ready know some­thing. That even be­fore, watch­ing high-ranked games and lis­ten­ing to com­ments, I had learned some­thing pas­sively. So I re­al­ized I don’t suck, at least not com­pletely. This sort of shocked me and I stopped watch­ing chess for a month or two, as I still thought that I would em­bar­rass my­self. But then I again re­turned to the videos, as some­how I fell asleep with them most ef­fec­tively. I just need my brain to work, to be into dif­fi­cult stuff cal­cu­lat­ing, and then I feel tired­ness and can sleep. And again, in those videos, stuff the host nar­rated made to­tal sense. So I played a chess bot. I sucked. Then I sort of mem­o­rized po­si­tions the bot plays re­li­ably and un­der­stood how it works. And fi­nally I started play­ing real peo­ple on the in­ter­net. And it was hard. It was ex­tremely hard. I sucked on time. I sucked on time 5 times in a row, so I went not with the most pop­u­lar 10-minute game but 30-minute. In that mode, peo­ple surely make fewer mis­takes than in 10 min­utes. And peo­ple who play 30 min­utes tend to want to think a lit­tle. But it got bet­ter. I won. And again. And it turned out I do know stuff my op­po­nents do not know, all learned pas­sively from the videos.

So I de­cided that it’s my hobby, as I don’t have any am­bi­tion of re­ally in­vest­ing time in it. That of course is be­cause I see how much it takes to play well. Currently, chess play­ers are the strongest they have ever been dur­ing his­tory. And the­ory has ad­vanced. And there are many courses, train­ers, bots, puz­zles. These are all very nice. It’s just that my re­la­tion­ship with chess started from sort of a strange en­ter­tain­ment arc. Of look­ing for a prob­lem for the mind to solve and falling asleep. And also I don’t have a sin­gle friend who plays chess. So this is all mys­te­ri­ous and un­in­ter­est­ing to them. It’s just my pas­sion to go deep once I dis­cover some­thing in­ter­est­ing. I think it’s a true hobby in a sense that it’s ex­actly with­out any pur­pose and it’s rad­i­cally open to be stopped, not as­sured to be pre­served; there are no perks for do­ing it what­so­ever and ab­solutely no ne­ces­sity.

In fact, I would like to do other things in­stead. For one, I would like to read more. The is­sue with read­ing and other ac­tiv­i­ties, like writ­ing, is that it’s risky. I feel vul­ner­a­ble read­ing. That of course im­plies that I read cer­tain things. And that is true. But when I don’t read such cer­tain things, I feel ir­ri­tated that I don’t read those cer­tain things. So the nat­ural con­clu­sion is that I’m, well, trau­ma­tized. Not from read­ing things, god for­bid, but from ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the dread of the last years. Yet it feels it threw me back far enough that I can’t prop­erly re­cover.

One thing I keep re­flect­ing upon is how com­i­cal my sit­u­a­tion with writ­ing has be­come. Over the last two years I’ve drafted count­less un­fin­ished notes, ar­ti­cles, es­says. Some I’m glad I never re­leased, some sim­ply missed their mo­ment. And some — it’s a shame they re­main in­com­plete.

There’s an anec­dote, though it’s true: Theodor Adorno had piles of un­pub­lished drafts ac­cu­mu­lat­ing years and years, and it cer­tainly both­ered him. At some point he be­gan ca­su­ally re­fer­ring to them in con­vos with friends by their tag lines, as if they are com­plete and pub­lished. I’m ex­pe­ri­enc­ing some­thing sim­i­lar. Somehow it gives me the free­dom to re­fer to a text, while fin­ish­ing it would re­move that free­dom.

Anyway, let’s hope I find a way to mit­i­gate this. It’s just weird to write texts. Especially when a text lays claim to some­thing. But there is a world of dif­fer­ence be­tween know­ing some­thing is right and ac­tu­ally do­ing it.

One prob­lem is prag­matic: writ­ing is hard. Even if it’s a failed text. And in a sense every text is a fail­ure, ex­cept for a few. It’s not that the ef­fort pays off — of­ten it does­n’t — is­sue is of­ten you end up at a deep deep loss, time- and ef­fort-wise. That’s why it’s best to write to fig­ure some­thing out for your­self, not know­ing what you will say un­til you reach the end. A kinf of “curiosity writ­ing”. Too bad there are so few texts like this. It’s risky, but it’s also more ad­ven­tur­ous. Maybe I need to stick to it, since I rarely man­age to write any other way any­way.

But an­other is­sue is con­nected to the theme that will pop up many times in my notes: how the in­ter­net be­came a lonely place. A net of iso­lated is­lands in sea of al­go­rithms, bots and at­ten­tion min­ing. Well, you know, all that stuff. And if you think this is lib­er­at­ing — “write like no­body gonna watch” — kick your­self: no more pub­li­ca­tions, no more mag­a­zines peo­ple read, no more dis­cov­ery of new au­thors. Do you see how mo­bile phone cam­eras sup­pos­edly rev­o­lu­tion­ized cin­ema? How many films shot on phones do you watch, or crave to watch, each year?

It’s kind of a strange land­scape nowa­days. Still, that part is bear­able. What is re­ally hard — and I’m fi­nally get­ting to it — is that a feel­ing I once had, that we as a wave, a flock, a dis­persed yet some­how united part of a gen­er­a­tion, had his­to­ry’s grace, that we could do stuff / act / speak/ come out / bring change — that feel­ing is gone. Well, many never had it to be­gin with. And we are still there some­where, I sup­pose. But hon­estly, the state of the world, or rather its tra­jec­tory, does not make it eas­ier. It is hard to face de­feat.

A month ago I stum­bled upon cool lit­tle site called in­progress.works and felt, to the core of my ex­is­tence, that it’s ex­actly what I need right now. There’s a tiny lit­tle com­mu­nity of peo­ple do­ing things and shar­ing how it’s go­ing. It’s struc­tured around a weekly up­date per­spec­tive that gives you a nice view of all 53 weeks of the year. Each week you post an up­date and can see up­dates from oth­ers. I fell in love with it.

I’m nat­u­rally dis­or­ga­nized and per­form poorly un­der a dis­ci­pline, so day-to-day plan­ning does not work for me — it’s harm­ful. But a weekly re­view seems to be just enough. The chance that I’ll find the mood to write a small up­date within 7 days is quite high. And when I see how many weeks are left, I get a sense of what has hap­pened so far and what I might want to do with the time re­main­ing.

After my first up­date, I no­ticed that peo­ple tend to treat it more like a show­case than a true up­date sys­tem — no shade here! But I felt shy and de­cided that I do need my own pri­vate weekly view. And guess what? Obsidian does not re­ally have that. With all the hun­dreds of plu­g­ins, it seems that peo­ple who care are very into or­ga­niz­ing, so the sys­tems the plu­g­ins pro­pose tend to be overkill and are based on daily notes. I, on the con­trary, dis­like daily notes.

So I built a small Obsidian plu­gin for my­self where I keep fill­ing the weeks one-by-one. But yeah — the Inprogress com­mu­nity is great.

Hello! I’ve de­cided to make this sort of mi­croblog to post short up­dates on how it’s go­ing. The thing is, I’m in deep win­ter mode, I mean hy­ber­nat­ing, and Autumn-Winter were rough given the num­ber of things like bu­reau­cracy and work, and I was sick a lot. So I will try to re­turn to my more nat­ural prac­tice of read­ing, writ­ing, mak­ing films, but surely it will take some time.

End of the year was hard (who would have guessed, right?) and brought on a work burnout with ex­haus­tion that I was not sure how to han­dle. In an un­fore­see­able turn of events, I stum­bled upon a few beau­ti­ful sites and de­cided to spend time do­ing a few mini pro­jects. Just be­cause I ac­ci­den­tally got in­spired, and well, I will tell more about this some next time, I guess. But one thing I did was cre­at­ing a read­ing list — up­dated and cu­rated by me. Dedicated to “all things crit­i­cal”, but above all it’s handy and helps me keep up with my “reading new-ish stuff” rou­tine.