I started embracing and justifying spending time on hobbies when I realized they give me something to talk about with non-IT people, and that is valuable. If your hobbies are IT work, and your work is IT work, there aren't many aspects of your life to which people outside of that domain can relate, in fact it can all seem quite boring and you end up with, "I'm doing well, work is going well." But if you can mention you went hiking somewhere and took a new lens for your camera, there are several things in there to which most people can relate and then maintain an interesting conversation.