{"id":158,"date":"2010-01-03T14:05:34","date_gmt":"2010-01-03T19:05:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aaronkuehn.net\/tol\/?p=158"},"modified":"2010-01-03T14:05:34","modified_gmt":"2010-01-03T19:05:34","slug":"at-leisure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aaronkuehn.net\/tol\/?p=158","title":{"rendered":"At Leisure"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"FastTraffic\"<\/a>I came into the world towards the end of all the hype about how computers and other technology would remove the mundane and tedious from our lives.\u00a0 We would be left with a small amount of work to do and an abundance of time for leisure.<\/p>\n

Oh, and we’d become a paperless society, too, because we’d get and share all the world’s information on “tubes.”\u00a0 I stopped holding my breath on that one in 1987.<\/p>\n

But where’s my leisure?\u00a0 I want my leisure!<\/p>\n

I know, I know…I spend more time sitting on my big cheeks than most people.\u00a0 And I puzzle over those around me who are in constant motion and all the time busy, busy, busy.\u00a0 But as a society, where’s all this leisure “they” said we would have?<\/p>\n

I was just pondering activities that people used to do in the early 1970s and how Progress has dramatically shortened the amount of time required for those tasks.\u00a0 Progress has in many cases totally eliminated the need to do many tasks.<\/p>\n

ATMs and debit cards might be good examples.\u00a0 I remember trips with my dad when he’d go to the bank for cash.\u00a0 We’d drive from home to the bank which was a 20-minute drive, each way.\u00a0 (Oh, and we’d make the trip in a Ford truck with a 390 cubic-inch V8 that, with a good Michigan tailwind, would get a stunning 10 miles to the 75\u00a2 gallon of leaded gasoline).\u00a0 Once at the bank we’d find a place to park.\u00a0 Then we’d get out.\u00a0 Then we’d walk into the bank.\u00a0 We’d go to the glass-topped table to fill out a withdrawal slip.\u00a0 Then we’d get in line.\u00a0 We’d wait a little bit.\u00a0 Then we’d get to the teller who would do some stuff behind the window and then give dad his money.<\/p>\n

It seems so archaic and backwards now!\u00a0\u00a0 Today’s world has all but eliminated the need to even have cash.\u00a0 Now with a debit card we have access to all of our money all the time — we don’t have to anticipate or guess what we’ll need.\u00a0 So that entire 50-minute ritual no longer needs to be undertaken.\u00a0 It’s gone.\u00a0 Poof!<\/p>\n

So let’s say we did that once a week:\u00a0 that’s 50 minutes of time available for…?\u00a0 For what?\u00a0\u00a0 Leisure?<\/p>\n

Well, I suppose.\u00a0 In reality I think other “work” sneaks in and eats up that time.\u00a0 It’s subtle and takes place over time and we don’t even realize we’ve saved time on one hand while the other hand is creating more work that craves its own time.<\/p>\n

Leisure seems to be a dirty word.\u00a0 We look down our noses with some envy, but mostly disdain, at those countries where workers get what we perceive to be huge amounts of paid time off.\u00a0 How can they compete, we wonder?\u00a0 They must not be very smart or ambitious.\u00a0 But we envy them and their time.<\/p>\n

But if some magical new administration made it so for us, would we leisure-ize the time or just fill it with more busy-ness?<\/p>\n

Some Type-A personalities thrive on being busy and filling every minute with work.\u00a0 That’s just the way they’re wired I suppose.\u00a0 I’m more of a slow and plodding person I guess.\u00a0 I love my job and get very geeked up over a tech challenge that gets the juices flowing.\u00a0 But I also look forward to those quiet hours at night when I watch some TV, read a book and am at leisure.<\/p>\n

I don’t think leisure time, whether it be a few hours at night or a few weeks a year to travel, bake bread, take pictures or get back to nature, is a bad thing.\u00a0 No matter how much we might love (or hate) our jobs and the day-to-day “work” required to stay alive and not be eaten by wolves, it is a necessary evil I think.\u00a0 I mean, in the Garden of Eden do we ever hear about Adam going off to work or Eve toiling for hours picking up Adam’s socks?<\/p>\n

Gotta go now, need to move laundry from the washer to the dryer….<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I came into the world towards the end of all the hype about how computers and other technology would remove the mundane and tedious from our lives.\u00a0 We would be left with a small amount of work to do and an abundance of time for leisure. Oh, and we’d become a paperless society, too, because […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aaronkuehn.net\/tol\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aaronkuehn.net\/tol\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aaronkuehn.net\/tol\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aaronkuehn.net\/tol\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aaronkuehn.net\/tol\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.aaronkuehn.net\/tol\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aaronkuehn.net\/tol\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aaronkuehn.net\/tol\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aaronkuehn.net\/tol\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}