What do you do with your free time?

[Zeraph]

And I mean anything. TV. Colonizing a small bacteria settlement with saved up boogers.

I find myself often with too much time. I don't care much for video games or going out to see a movie. And my friends are often busy.

Anyways, I do bad things, well a couple anyway. I listen to music, smoke my pipe, drink beer, and cook-eat delicious things. And occasionally I'll sharpen my weapons and clean them. Otherwise I need better things to do. Used to read A LOT (13 years, a book almost every week). But I swear I've run out of good books. Or books I like anyhow.

So what do you do?

[Cimarron29414]

I believe in industry. Free time should be used to make your life better, to create, build, improve. So for me, computer games and pipe smoking aren't on the menu.

So my industrious free time is used for:
Making beer/mead
Home improvements
Growing food
hunting/maintenance surrounding hunting
garage sales
Wood working
Sewing (It's just like woodworking, only with much softer wood and nails.)

My non-industrious free time:
Soccer
SCUBA
Swing Dance

[Zeraph]

Originally Posted by Cimarron29414

I believe in industry. Free time should be used to make your life better, to create, build, improve. So for me, computer games and pipe smoking aren't on the menu.

So my industrious free time is used for:
Making beer/mead
Home improvements
Growing food
hunting/maintenance surrounding hunting
garage sales
Wood working
Sewing (It's just like woodworking, only with much softer wood and nails.)

My non-industrious free time:
Soccer
SCUBA
Swing Dance

But getting drunk is OK?

I would actually love to hunt again. But I don't live in the best place for it atm.

[Cimarron29414]

Since I started brewing, I drink a lot less. It's like "the precious", your own beer. It's difficult to let go of it, even if it's going to your belly.

[Wandrin]

As I wander though little out of the way towns, I enjoy exploring and learning a bit about the history of the town and region. Some of the history is fascinating.

I also usually have a course or two in progress through iTunesU, just for fun. Currently, cultural anthropology and analytic geometry.

[cadre]

Originally Posted by Zeraph

But getting drunk is OK?

I would actually love to hunt again. But I don't live in the best place for it atm.

Haha well you could but you'd have to come up my way to the mountains. You should take up knitting.

Free time doesn't exist for me at the moment but once in a while I can break away from writing lab reports and do something for myself.

I used to ride motorcycles (sport bikes) but since that is an expensive hobby I have had to set it aside recently. I do have a saltwater fish tank that I can easily spend hours tinkering with. I also ride my pedal bike around and read (usually not at the same time). Oh and rock climbing when I get the chance.

[Strange Famous]

Play stupid and pointless Facebook games (like Cityville, Mafia War, Cafe World...) I play any game obsessively for a month then get bored of it and waste time on something else

Read trashy detective novels

Play World of Warcraft

Watch the same DVDs over and over

Drink
_

We live in age of mass distraction, eh?

[Wise Guy]

Read..

[mb99usa]

Read, T.V., video games, surf the 'Net.

[MeltedMetalGlob]

I usually putter around on the computer with video/photo/audio editing software, if I only have a small amount of time. If I have more, I'll watch a movie.

Oh, and I guess I've been devoting time to posting here as well!

[Zeraph]

I've been reading (novels) for 16 years (nearly a book a week)....there is very little left for me to read in the genres I like.

Is that a real invitation cadre? I wouldn't mind a trip north.

[Fremen]

I've been catching up on classic public domain books ever since I got this tablet. There are some great sci-fi novels out there I've never heard of before.

I also play a lot of online Modern Warfare 2.

I've been thinking of raising some ducks and chickens, lately.
Not sure if I want the hassle again, though.

[canuckguy]

I ride my bicycle.

I get a free minute as my wife is gone shopping? I ride my bike.

My office closes early? I get on my bike and go for a ride.

[Plan9]

TFP apparently. I don't really get free time anymore.

...

When I do have time to myself (on vacation):

Running (and procrastinating on that marathon)
Twisting back the right grip on my motorcycle
Martial arts (a fighting stress workout is gnarly)
Shooting sports with military firearms
Hiking various local state park trails
Seeing things around the surface of the Earth

...

Super Important Edit:

Video games are for losers. Idiot rumination.

Seriously? That's hobby? "This is the Static Age!"

[citadel]

What free time?

Originally Posted by Plan9

Video games are for losers. Idiot rumination.

They were fun when I was a kid, but they seem to drown the lives of the adults who play them.

[Fremen]

Originally Posted by Plan9

Super Important Edit:

Video games are for losers. Idiot rumination.

We can't all be globe-trotting super-spies with a gun fetish.
Some of us wear the mantle of "loser", if not proudly, at the least, honorably.

[Baraka_Guru]

Video games are also for those who can't afford "real" hobbies. Reading is too.

Am I a "double loser" for doing both?

[dlish]

i run, hike, bike, play rugby, swim, TFP. i also teach kids how to swim.

[zenda]

Originally Posted by Cimarron29414

Wood working
Sewing (It's just like woodworking, only with much softer wood and nails.)

Magnificent reframe

I don't have free time. I'm a junkie for 'transferability/recontectualization' of skills, so everything sooner or later becomes integrated with my 'work missions'

For example, I am a sad video game puppy - I've been playing Unreal Tournament for ... Eleven years. First year, it WAS 'free time' - I was itching to frag Xan, and I went hell for leather to WIN the tournament, become the Elite Warrior, and then walk around my hometown feeling like a hero. I did have to tone down the jump-dodging in my local supermarket, and seeing the interior of local churches as 'great for Z-axis action in death match' was a weird experience. Soon, the skills knocked on to halve the time it took me to edit music in Cubase, my 'recording studio' program, and enabled me and my partner to reach high positions on the British amateur ballroom dancing ladder. My spatial, reaction, and strategic defensive and offensive skills on the dance floor were a direct ONE to ONE link with my unreal tournament. Roving street photography. A grasp of death match moves and on-the-spot strategizing ups my 'good' shots significantly. My point is that for the last 8 years, Unreal Tournament has been my 'practice area' for 'key' skills needed in my jobs. As with UT, so with all other activities which started out as casual 'play'.

All that's left is my falling half asleep in a chair, and interspersing that with sitting half awake in a chair, kind of looking at one of the walls

All the best

[uncle phil]

i golf, and i read...

[ring]

“Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.” - Thoreau

[snowy]

I TFP, I write, I knit, I read, I bake bread, I bake other stuff, I cook, I brew, I clean my house, I garden, I taste wine, I hike, I walk, I watch cats wrestle...

[cadre]

Originally Posted by Zeraph

I've been reading (novels) for 16 years (nearly a book a week)....there is very little left for me to read in the genres I like.

Is that a real invitation cadre? I wouldn't mind a trip north.

Maybe if I had more than five minutes of free time a week. If something changes I will let you know though.

By the way, video games are a great way to waste free time. But I'm told I should take them up to help with my ability to concentrate. Haha.

[DRP976]

1. Watch pron/release
2. Read stuff (practical stuff to enlighten me)
3. Do something nice for someone else
4. Clean (cars,house, etc)

*Whatever I feel like doing.

[Freetofly]

I paint, I draw, I read. Sometimes I go into Wikipedia and get lost clicking on one article to another, to another.

[Plan9]

Originally Posted by dlish

i run, hike, bike, play rugby, swim, TFP. i also teach kids how to swim.

Dlish, what you do isn't running. It's something else.

And you should teach me how to swim sometime.

[VidaFacile]

I have ridiculous amounts of free time. A light courseload, friends with day jobs, and a town where the activity of choice is meth makes for a halfway dull lifestyle.

I often find myself wrapped up in projects that mean absolutely nothing to anyone else. I'll spend a week detailing the British monarchy on a huge chart in my bedroom and then find myself on a binge to sample all the various wares the local liquor store has to offer.

I read constantly, going back and forth between general novels and natural history. I play with an herb garden, go prowling local nurseries for cacti, and end up trying to concoct things that I shouldn't be messing with.

In other words, what often starts out as an innocent project often turns out to be borderline illegal, but fascinating none the less. I make life exciting when I need to.

[TigerBlood]

I keep a sketch book handy, have some sketching apps on my iPhone, read, play with the cat (when I can find him), take long walks in nice weather, browse Amazon or Wikipedia.

[EventHorizon]

write. take care of my bonsai. smoke pipe tobacco. write. casll big name magazines with ideas to write. read read read. study. make coffee. play runescape (still have my account from back when there were only 2 servers!) talk to gf.

[Jove]

Read, post on TFP/Reddit, and exercise. If I don't run 4-5 times a week, I feel like shit.

[MiSo]

anime, manga, and my favorite tv shows.

i also play the flute, but i guess that would fall into the work category also. I'm in the U.S. Army Band.