Where does your "free time" go?

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Hi, reader.

I wanted to start this thread because I'm interested in hearing your experience with one or more of the following situations concerned with "free time" and what you do with it. Notice, I've used quotation marks because the idea of free time can be incredibly subjective, and I want to hear what you think about the subject.

(1) When someone says "With all that free time..." "What do you do in your free time?" and so on (think of your own variation based on your experience), what is your response? Do you consider analyzing, preparing, or any other activity that occurs during cognition truly "free time"?

(2) What activities do you consider that would fit into your category of free time? Personally, I like games (board or video) and music. The comforting fact of these activities seems to rely on letting myself be absorbed into the activity without interference from my mind.

Thanks for reading. I'm excited to hear your story. If you would like to add anything else, please do! -Michael

(1) I can't recall anybody saying that to me, I tend to say "I don't know where all my time goes" and "work expands to fill the time available to it doesn't it?" to people, and they tend to agree. I tend to add that it's amazing how I'm busier now than I was when I was working, and that I don't know how I managed to find the time to go to work. If they did ask me what I did with my spare time I'd probably say music.

(2) As you say, it's hard to know what is free time and what isn't. These days I find free time hardly seems to exist, I have a habit of trying to do everything I do exceptionally carefully. That leads to my labouring everything. The donkey work I find myself doing can be hard, but if the result is good then I get a lot of pleasure out of that, and lot of the work is repeating the same cycle of steps, and I like to exercise previous experience in solving problems. As I say, the simple answer is that I've mostly seen music as the thing that fills my free time. A lot of the time it's technical stuff like calculating my ideal guitar string thicknesses and finding a good miking technique for recording it, and I've made tons of electronic gadgets, though not so much since a lot of ready-made gadgets got so cheap, but I've spent nerdy ages squeezing the best out of cheap stuff and honing it to my preferences. I often feel the actual playing and singing is a more free thing, and I don't do enough of that. Even then, rehearsing and repeat-recording can become very laboured. In many ways I prefer the artistic side to the technical, so there's a tension between the artistic and nerdy sides, though what begins as one extreme often becomes the other.

Free time for me is the little bits of in between time. What I mean by that is time too and from work when I'm cycling and I'm alone or the little bit of time on a Saturday and Sunday morning when I might get half an hour to myself.

I like to spend any spare time I have by myself where I can process the complete and utter confusion of the rest of the time.

/dev/null

Almost all the time, I usually "wait for something to happen" as I work, do hobbies, and think. But almost never whenever I'm at rest.

At free times, depends where I'm.

If it's during work, almost nothing really, in between times of nothing to do at those moments. I'd just focus at something or aimlessly think about something if I couldn't get my hands on something to do or read.

After work, and day offs...
If at home, I'd rather go all out doing whatever I'm doing without distractions. Unless it's an emergency, it wouldn't easy for me to drop whatever I was doing. I'd do chores as soon as I have the time, so I won't have to do it later. After that, I could be playing, watching, eating, reading, crafting something, etc...

When I'm outside, alone, usually I'd pace for miles if I have the time. If I have more than 3 to 4 hours of free time with good weather, that's when I'd usually explore places I don't usually go to.
If I were with someone else, I don't usually consider that a free time, but a free time consumed because I had to take account on that someone... Mostly I'd just follow.

If one wonders if I have a routine for this, my routines kept breaking and changing itself depending on my biological reactions and status -- mostly every 2 weeks or less -- Ovulation throws me off and makes me lazier, monthly cycles or being sick makes everything jarring, being cold lessens my means of doing other things, sinusitis dictates my sleep time or if I ever sleep at all, or waking up too early or too late adds or lessens certain times of doing whatever, etc....

Kinda why I'm aware where my time goes. Mostly I'd wish that I don't need sleep or rest at all... But needs...

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Lose more time here - Updates at least once a week.

Lucky for me all my time is free. I've never once paid for time to live. I used to pay phone minutes, but not since 2011 when I went back to having a land line instead. Cell phones are a waste of money if you have a perfectly good internet connection at home & don't go anywhere that doesn't also have good internet connections.

Of course we must pay for living essentials -- food, water, shelter, clothing, transportation.

What I do with my time currently:
- school: learning computer programming languages
- daily chores & hygiene routines
- work on assembling 2 workshops
- recycle & reuse parts from any equipment I can disassemble (I especially like sorting fasteners & finding out the size category they belong in)
- read one of my favorite book series 'Owners' Workshop Manual' published by Haynes Publishing
- researching & hypothesizing how to create a real pain gauge using nanotech as a first stage toward creating a way to use nanotech to find anything wrong in a human body, including the brain

I spend most of it watching TV, listening to my iPod, or doing things like drawing and coloring.

My free time mostly consists of obsessing about a ton of things. I usually obsess over one thing for about a week or two and then move onto something else that I think is interesting. For me it's like a cycle, and my obsessisions are Anime, K-Pop, Makeup, and travel.