On Free Time
I should severely limit how much free time I have. And I plan to, but I’ll get to that. It has become so much of a staple for me so as to no longer be deserving of the moniker ‘luxury’, and that is something I desperately need to change. Ever since I left university at the start of this year, it has been a constant struggle to keep my time occupied and designated towards specific tasks, projects or travel. So far, that has worked rather well, the time since then having comprised of short trips or visits to family or longer travel or even the inception of this blog, but I’m at a crucial point at which more planning must be done.
I’ve written before of my penchant for procrastination, but attached to that is a just desire to do as little as possible. That’s not strictly true – it’s more that I like the idea of doing something more than I like the actual act of starting it. What that means is that, should I be so ‘lucky’ as to have any free time, I end up doing what I normally would do – nothing. This is particularly frustrating because I have curated long lists of media to consume and things to do in my free time that I simply do not. Even in this sea of ease, I invest less energy than I want to.
After the long trip I just went on with friends, I feel as though the two weeks I now have ‘off’ are potentially warranted rests about which I shouldn’t feel much guilt. I do, though, want to make sure that this time is used better. Rather, that I raise the standard of the bare minimum action I would choose to do and, crucially, would actually do. The first way I intend to do so is by sticking to at least some form of writing every day, as I am now demonstrating to myself. Also, crossing some things off my media bucket list. I want to be careful, though, not to at any point make myself feel bad about this. I’ve been making more of an effort recently to amend my bad habits not by admonishing my poor behaviour but rather by reinforcing and internalising that I can do better and my capacity for improvement.
So I am capable of more productive free time, in a sense, and I should start enacting that now. But what of the future? Well, as I mentioned in my last entry, I have the entirety of 2023 and beyond to plan, and of the several questions I am asking myself in search of an answer, perhaps the most critical involves what I can be doing at any given moment in time to occupy myself. This past year has been a bit of a mess, and it’s my intention to avoid that for the foreseeable future. That means I need to plan for that productivity, as well as for the downtime, the latter of which I am trying to make something I would enjoy more. A side-effect of not doing the things I want to in my free time is that I spend my time regretting it after the fact, which is a waste of energy. To amend a popular saying, I’m going to work hard and play smart.