Building plastic models is one of my favourite things to do. I wrote about it before, but I still sometimes think about why I enjoy it so much. It is probably because modelling is different from my typical work, where I sit at a computer and write papers or analyze data. Also, unlike pretty much any other job, there is no expectation of success. In other words, the process of building a model is autotelic, i.e. its value is in itself and not in the outcome.
On a somewhat related topic, I recently learned that the definition of the word “job” has been changing in the last couple of decades. While previously it universally meant “work done for money”, lately it has been returning to its original meaning of “a task” (e.g., “it’s my job to walk the dog in the morning”). In that sense, I think that even our hobbies could be loosely defined as “jobs”, even if their outcomes ultimately don’t have any monetary value or even a tangible benefit.
