The labels arrive quickly. If you buy a sketchbook, are you becoming an artist? If you write regularly, should you call yourself a writer? The question can make a simple interest feel like an application for membership in a group whose standards you do not understand.
Begin with the verb. Draw, write, sew, photograph or learn the appropriate process with suitable instruction. The activity can occupy an ordinary part of your week before you decide how to describe its place in your life.
Labels can be useful when they help you find community, explain your work or recognize a commitment. They become less useful when they make every imperfect attempt feel like evidence that you are impersonating someone more legitimate.
Choose a manageable way to practice and notice what you enjoy. You may like the activity occasionally, want to study it seriously or discover that another part of the process interests you more. Experience gives you better information than deciding an identity in advance.
If someone asks, you can use plain language: “I have been learning to draw,” or “I enjoy taking photographs.” You do not need to diminish the interest, and you do not need to make claims about qualifications or professional experience you do not have.
Let the relationship with the activity change over time. An occasional hobby may become a sustained practice. A serious period may give way to something else. None of these changes means the earlier interest was false.
Use verbs when a label feels too large. “I have been taking photographs on my walks” describes something real without asking you to defend whether you are a photographer. It also gives another person a useful opening for conversation. You can talk about what you noticed or tried, rather than about qualifications you do not claim and ambitions you have not yet chosen.
Let the level of involvement emerge through practice. Some interests stay occasional; others become a regular part of the week. You may eventually want training, a community or a more public commitment, but none has to be decided before the next session. An activity does not become worthless if it never becomes the central description attached to your name. It can occupy one enjoyable corner of a life with several other corners.
The useful question is whether you want to spend more time doing the thing. A name may follow naturally, or it may never matter much. You are allowed to have an active creative life made of particular activities without first producing a convincing public explanation of what kind of person those activities make you.
A little more room to be yourself.