The average golf course in Arizona uses 450,000 gallons a day according to [1]. According to [2], this means we're talking about 4-8 golf courses per day. There are over 200 golf courses near Phoenix, so your concern is legitimate the water usage here is marginal relative to the economic impact. As other commenters have pointed out, if you really want to impact water issues, there are far more efficient ways to tackle them.
One thing that stands out to me is that the author has been selling herself -- her core self -- for a very long time, perhaps her entire career. She tells us this from the very start, explaining that cooking can't be her hobby any more now that it's her job. Now the new hobby is her job! I think this is a reflection of the professional pressures placed on writers trying to make a living online. Confessional writing requires sharing some sort of personal journey of growth, but it also requires building networks of people interested in you. Why are her Instagram followers ready to buy the things she makes? Why does selling seem like such a natural choice? Who wants to start an informal business? Why make it formal? Because she's already created a business platform, and that is her life. She tries to elevate her experience by fitting her experience in a broader narrative about the role of hobbies, but this rings hollow because the hobby itself is not her problem (also, note that the second pair of Gelber quotations contradict each other - hobbies are both a call to the pre-industrial, and bringing the factory into the home). The true subtext is that she's always sold herself and the monetization of her hobby was almost inevitable because of the mental habits she has cultivated throughout her life. Yes she's jealous of the artist RC, but to the author "do your own thing" is just another imperative to cultivate for a more marketable self.
Why am I engaging with this article at all? Well, we all have to mold ourselves to the environments around us. I've consciously avoided monetizing my hobbies, but I've made immense efforts to cultivate a self that functions effectively in my profession. Is that a sacrifice? I'm not sure how to think about it. I wish the author would speak to what seems to me the real story here. It's not that her hobby has turned into a job through some universal process, but that she has turned her life into her work and the two cannot be separated.
