Do You Have Too Much Free Time?
“You have too much free time on your hands!”
I hear this a lot. To be quite honest, I don’t quite know what it means to have “too much” free time. Could someone please explain this to me?
I often hear this phrase after I have shown something I have created to someone. The object in mention is usually met with squinting eyes and brushed off with the phrase “You have too much free time.” Does this mean that rather than creating something I should have been working? Do I need a part time job to fill in my extra hours? Why can’t I spend my idle time making something silly?
Perhaps I am broken? Is it not right of my to use my time doing something like making a puppet or drawing? Does everyone else work all the time? Do their 9-to-5s actually keep them until late in the evening, where they toil away until they return home late at night, eat dinner, and go to bed? Does everyone else in the world work 2 jobs? Maybe everyone cobbles or has no time for free time because their house is constantly in disrepair and must be cleaned! Their cats are hungry and they haven’t a moment to themselves between work and daily chores. I make time for myself. I must be broken. That must be it.
You must have too much free time.
Does it count as your free time if you spend it reading books or playing a video game? Surfing the internet or going for a run? Perhaps it is not considered a waste of free time if you use on something that someone was paid to create? Maybe watching a movie is valuable way to spend free time because someone was paid to act in it, to write it, to direct it. The movie wasn’t created during anyone’s free time, it was done for work! Speaking of work, is it still free time if I am at work and have nothing to work on? Someone please explain this to me!
I’m not sure what the answers to any of those questions might be. What I do know is that I must have too much free time on my hands. You are using your free time wisely if you spend it washing dishes and doing chores. You are using your free time correctly curling up on your favorite chair and reading for hours on end. It even seems that it is an appropriate use of free time to sit on the couch and play video games online for hours on end. But, if you create something, that takes dedication and time, you are wasting your free time. Maybe it’s that what I make is creativity and lacks functionality? Perhaps that could be it.
Oh well. I don’t have time to think about this any more.
-HP-
2 Comments to "Do You Have Too Much Free Time?"
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I’m guilty. I’ve used this phrase. I shall no longer.
The real price of everything, what everything really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it.
-Adam SmithWhich leads to my second quote.
Linux is only free if your time has no value.
And therefore, As long as your time has no value to you, feel free to do whatever the hell you want.
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An interesting concept…’too much free time’. Who is to judge how an individual uses their time. Who is to judge what is or is not a productive use of time. Should we not seize every ‘free’ moment to be creative, to rest, to renew our souls? Is life’s purpose to toil and die or to create beauty or silly and be joyful.
Is free time productive if you clean your home, perhaps, but it is a collapsable accomplishment, if you run 10 K a day? Where are you running to? Reading, watching TV, painting, gazing at stars…do these only count as ‘productive’ if a paycheck is earned while doing them/
Time is ours…it’s free and no one can take it away! So spend it in joy, in creativity, in rest…It’s yours.
posted under: jihad, unfinished posts | 2 comments