Time is a luxury

After World War II, people started to have more free time because of technological advances. With more leisure time, leisure activities became a salable commodity and (after poorly condensing 60ish years of history) here we are today.

Games, blogs, social media websites, etc. that are designed to "help" us actually make us waste more time looking at them. In trying to go running, I spend 30 minutes downloading and "researching" apps that will help me track my run or give me a training menu to optimize my run (why don't I just go running and do the research later?). We fill the little gaps in our day with information that may not even be useful and suddenly, we're busy without even realizing it (where does all the time go, I always wonder).

I've come to realize that leisure activities are exactly that: when one has leisure. However, we've flipped this phenomenon and leisure activities have started to fill up the day when work needs to be done. There's quite obviously a balance required for this (one cannot always work and one cannot always be passing time with leisure activities unless one has the financial means to do so) but there's a problem when one tries to pepper the day with leisure activities when one does not have the availability to do so.

The prevalence of these "time-wasters" is indicative of a displacement of what is important in life, whether it is work, chores, homework, etc. We've forgotten that things need to be done first before we can relax. Or at least I have.

Time can be seen as a commodity. In line with the idea that time is money, how are you spending your time? What is your day filled with? I feel like this shows what is important to you and more importantly, what creates you. If you are not what you do, then what are you?

There are flaws to this way of thinking but I wonder, if I spend all my time playing Tetris Battle, all I am is a master at Tetris Battle. What have I gained from it? Spatial reasoning? How does that help me or society? The way society views people is by their utility and for someone like me, I am useless to society and undeserving of any compensation for time that I spent poorly (because I have not contributed to society in any significant way).

So then, the question becomes, how do I (you, we) spend our time more wisely? I think that I need to realize that I need to get the things that are important done first. I keep forgetting that for some reason. Focus on what's important to me, whether that's the really annoying daily tasks of doing the dishes, putting down that game of Tetris to talk to a friend, or writing the paper that I'm stuck on (or the story that I have swimming in my head).

Replace the trash with what is needed and simplify life to only the necessities. Leisure time is a luxury because time can only be spent (and never gained back).