As I sit here pondering what I should say after what is once again a few months hiatus from this blog, mostly due to a six-day-a-week work schedule, I sip coolly on my glass of fabulously cheap california riesling (seriously), and listen to the subtle but emotion-wracking strains of Mumford & Sons. And yes, it is only 6:37 in the evening, but what do I care? It's as close to a perfect day as God has deemed possible in Wisconsin's version of the final summer month, and I am done with work for the day. I deserve to decompress, I tell myself, and hell, if I don't bore myself, I may even sit on the porch and smoke my pipe later. On my mind: I could do something useful with my evening, maybe clean and continue unpacking my room, write a little, read, or even start a new hobby on my unending list of hobbies-to-start. But all of this seems so dreadfully dull, that I'll be lucky if I even finish this blog entry to the extent that I feel it is worth publishing. I've tried with a few different entries throughout the summer, but to no avail--they lacked all readability, in as much as I would term "wit," or at the very least anything that does not sound like my ramshackled complaints at the world as I see it. You don't want to read that, I don't want to have you read that, and so, the blog goes unpublished. Sadly, what I am most likely to do this evening is to waste my time in such as useless and possibly even violent manner by playing PS3 or watching one of my latest netflix addictions.
What are useful hobbies? Truly, I think about this question more than I probably should. I want to spend as much of my time being useful and productive, and I even have the will to do many interesting things, but I never seem to have the motivation when I actually have the time. A good instance can be found in the fact that I want to learn to sew. Once you've stopped laughing, realize that my motivation is purely utilitarian. I want to be able to tailor clothes to fit me better, and as I cannot afford to have a professional tailor for everyday usage, it seems like a good idea to learn how to do so myself. The problem is, that when I have the time, I never have the motivation. And yet, I have the motivation to waste my time on fruitless divergences.
I've come to realise that the problem isn't actually found in a lack of time, as much as I constantly convince myself and others of the contrary. Rather, it is a problem buried in myself and my inability to seemingly force my will to supersede my hedonism. One could say that I have a problem with self-control, but not in the way that one most often thinks about it. My time-wasting isn't profligate in the usual sense, though it may be thought as such simply in its utter uselessness. In other words, though it may not be "negative" time spent, it certainly doesn't count as "positive" either... I've also noticed that the problem is exacerbated when I am tired or when I've just finished a long day. So, is this inability to force my will over my wants a lack in my own conditioning? Am I lacking a basic ability to focus and control my self that others have seemingly learned in their "education" towards the world? Then again, I know others like me in this regard. The problem is not to be found captivating only me--when I look at others around me, I at times appear to be more future-focused than the majority I perceive. The problem seems both more more clear and more muddied than it was when I began.
3 comments:
Hey, well, here's my two cents.
1) If you play blackops, or are getting MW3 on PS3 shoot me a friend request sometime. I generally play Friday nights and then maybe some other times. @ d_schmidt
2) I know the feeling. I have many things that I would like to do, learn, and read. I have some free time and yet I have a hard time forcing myself to accomplish them. I look about and see that I have a far greater future-oriented focus than most people, and yet, I still struggle greatly with this.
I have come to the conclusion, that yes, we are conditioned this way. People who I have read about who are masters of time managment did not ever seem to know "recreation" or "entertainment" as we know it. This is confirmed for me in that while on summer break, I appear to spend more time in less-profitable things. During school, my schedule is packed and busy and my "free time" is filled with responsibilities I have volunteered for and thus, I waste little time. For me, I find that to ensure I am profitable, I have to put myself in situations that cause me to be efficient.
3) We do need a time of rest from our work. I don't think that I can condemn all recreation/entertainment, thus I play Black Ops, and read fantasy novels. But I have struggled with how much is appropriate. I try to keep an understanding in my mind that I can easily let my rest turn into hours and hours and thus become sin.
4) It wasn't worth signing out of my other account and signing in on this one, so I didn't.
First, I find that my most practiced hobbies are things that take physical action but not mental action. Thus, I crochet (a physical action) WHILE watching TV (mentally decompressing) - rest and productivity at the same time. I also like folding clothes or cross-stitching while watching/listening to something. In fact, I've done it so much that way that now, I get bored JUST watching TV or what-have-you. My hands get fidgety. Personally, I like that; it makes me feel like I've conditioned myself to be doing something and being less lazy.
Second, it's nice to read your blog - even it it's less witty and more rambling. I've never been one of the busy peoples and one of my hobbies is reading everyone's blogs. =D
My take on the overall picture: While video games and TV are great for letting one's brain turn off after a long day (or night) of work, I don't think it's a good idea to leave a brain off for too long. Otherwise, it gets used to having that amount of down time and then you're in trouble when you don't get it.
Also, if you get used to having video games before you get married, before too long you're going to want to go back to them after getting married (even if you take a sabbatical for a while). It's a rare woman who enjoys watching her husband play video games or likes to play them as often as he does. More often than not, wives end up hating video games. I think this has less to do with the fact that they play them and more to do with the fact that they play them a LOT or end up choosing video games over time spent with their wife, or they don't help bring in the groceries because they're too busy shooting someone, forget to do something she asked because they were stuck in the game, etc. etc. You get the idea.
Note to my brother: You said "two cents" but had four points. /poke, poke =D I found it funny. =D
David: Sweet. I don't play blackops. It ended up being a choice between that or continuing with MW2, which I hadn't (and still haven't) completely "finished" yet... so, yeah. I will be getting MW3 as soon as it comes out and I play ps3. I'll send you a friend req here soon. :)
Also, you make some really good points. In my head, I'm sort of connecting 2) and 3) as you have them, because they are sort of a connected issue. Balance is the key. But the motivation for that balance is, I think, where I struggle.
Varda: Hmm. I see what you mean. At Uni, I would often have some television show running in the background while I was reading. The problem for me with that was, that unless the book was very interesting to me, I generally ended up getting distracted. While reading philosophy or something, however, it worked really well to sort of keep all of those other things in my mind busy so that I could focus on the subject.
To your last non-brother poking point, I unfortunately know all to well that you are right. I haven't gotten to that experience yet myself, thankfully...but I have a few other friends from uni that got married and I've witnessed them struggling with this very problem. It is quite the interesting predicament, actually. Thank you for the warning, though, I will definitely have to try to counteract this somehow. Luckily, and this may just be a weird personality quirk of mine, but when there is a choice between playing a video game and doing something with people, I will almost always rather be with the person/people.... I hope this may somehow be a slight help to me, but of course, only time will tell, and those games are, afterall, ridiculously addicting.
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