My Very Specific Definition of “Free Time”…
Here’s one of my problems. And, woo boy, do I have a lot of them.
I have an extremely narrow definition of free time.
In my mind, free time means sitting on a couch. Preferably with a book. Possibly watching a Korean TV show. Maybe staring into space while holding a remote I’m not even using. The key requirement is that I am stationary and no one expects anything from me.
Anything else?
That’s an imposition.
Now, obviously, some things are not free time. Grocery shopping. Running errands. Household chores. Fixing things around the house. These are clearly classified as Life Responsibilities That Are Actively Stealing My Couch Hours.
But here’s my real problem: I also count things that normal people consider leisure as not free time.
Take Friday night.
My wife and I went to a Blackhawks game. We stayed the entire game. We had arena food. We watched the Hawks… play hockey. I won’t go so far as to say they played well or bravely, but technically they were on the ice.
Now, by any objective standard, this should qualify as free time.
You’re not working.
You’re not doing chores.
You’re watching your favorite sport
With your favorite person
You’re eating stadium food that was included in the price (so it sort of feels free)
And yet my brain still thought:
“Great. There goes my Friday night.”
Saturday morning wasn’t much better.
I got up and went for a two-hour bike ride. Fresh air, exercise, beautiful morning. The kind of thing people with life coaches and wellness podcasts talk about as the foundation of a healthy lifestyle.
Then I got a massage, my first in three years.
A reasonable person might think:
Wow, what a fantastic morning.
My brain thought:
“Well… that whole morning is gone now.”
Next up was Costco, which I will allow counts as a chore. Costco is less a store and more of a survival event where you push a cart the size of a canoe through crowds of people hoarding industrial quantities of mayonnaise.
After that I stopped at Chick-fil-A, which definitely does not qualify as a chore unless you consider waffle fries a burden.
Then I picked up my son at the airport. This technically falls under Responsible Parent Duties™, although it also I got to enjoy the 40-minute ride home with him.
My focus, however, was not on that.
My focus was on traffic.
And the growing realization that my entire afternoon had somehow vanished.
This is the pattern.
Unless I am sitting on a couch at home, doing absolutely nothing, I somehow feel like my time has been stolen from me.
Bike ride? Time gone.
Massage? Time gone.
Hockey game with my wife? Time gone.
Picking up my kid from the airport? Time gone.
I don’t like this about myself.
It’s no way to live.
I’m doing things people actively plan vacations around—sporting events, outdoor exercise, family time—and instead of enjoying them I’m mentally calculating how many couch minutes I’ve lost.
That’s a terrible way to measure a life.
So I’m trying to work on it. I need to get my brain to treat all of those activities as the good things they are.
Free time isn’t just the hours spent horizontal on a couch.
Free time is any time you’re not working, not doing chores, and lucky enough to be with people you actually like.
Of course, if we’re being completely honest…
The couch still makes a very strong argument.