Free Time

Fairly recently, I posted an item referencing fishing.*

This got me to thinking about free time.  More specifically, it got me to thinking about it on a then vs. now basis.

When I was a kid, my father was always very hard working.  But he did manage to incorporate a fair amount of time for his favorite pursuits.  He never took prolonged vacations (and frankly, I don't now) but we did go hunting and fishing a lot, and in the summer, he grew a substantial garden.  It seems to me, moreover, that this was close to the norm.  Quite a few men here hunted and fished a fair amount (and still do). Growing a garden was common.  People who pursued the winter sports found time to do so.  What this means is that even busy people managed to have their evenings and weekends off, usually.

I don't seem to be able to manage finding as much free time, and I think this is the norm now.  Indeed, sociologists say that this is the case.  Americans now don't even take their full amount of allotted vacation days.  Something is going on, and that something isn't good.

Believe it or not, this was originally drafted for publication in 2014. But I didn't get around to finishing the post, so I'm doing it now.   Does that say something about free time?  Probably not really.  It all probably says something about me.

Maybe this entire post actually does, in concert with the general topic.  I probably don't have as much free time (most of these posts are done early in the morning before I go to work) because I'm bad at creating free time for myself.  But also, societally, people have less, maybe, because of the encroachment of technology into everything, which has brought work with it.