Hands up who\u2019s feeling there aren\u2019t enough hours in the day.<\/p>\n
Everyone? I thought so.<\/p>\n
Okay \u2013 hands up who has more than one hobby, or whose children have more than one evening activity.<\/p>\n
Everyone? I thought so.<\/p>\n
Hands up who doesn\u2019t want to give any of those pursuits up because they help bring balance to your life or your kids\u2019 lives?<\/p>\n
Uh-huh.<\/p>\n
pastime<\/strong> \/\u02c8p\u0251\u02d0st\u028c\u026am\/<\/span> n. 1<\/strong> A pleasant recreation or hobby.<\/span> 2<\/strong> A sport or game. [PASS1 + TIME] <\/span><\/p>\n Pastimes are so named because many of them started off as ways to pass the time between the end of the day\u2019s work commitments and bedtime. I boldly state that, even though I haven\u2019t read any authoritative article on it, because I cannot conceive of another explanation for the word\u2019s adoption. Feel free to comment below if you know differently.<\/p>\n Quilting, hockey, Irish dance, reading, soccer, fencing, scouts, jigsaw puzzles, video games, painting, writing poetry, chess, playing musical instruments, knitting, football, gymnastics, scrabble, letter writing, amateur\/community theatre \u2013 these and thousands of other hobbies and sports are pastimes unless you\u2019re being paid to participate in them. Before anyone takes me to task, I will happily acknowledge that many of them provide physical exertion (much needed in a largely sedentary lifestyle) and many of them provide mental diversion (much needed in our results-focused society). The goals of many of them are rewarding too \u2013 a family heirloom in the making (i.e. a quilt), an enjoyable evening\u2019s entertainment for an audience, or the pleasure and pride of having proved oneself in some form of competition.<\/p>\n However, a very large number of people (of which I\u2019m one) fill their lives up so full with hobbies, sports, community volunteering and so on that their diaries become completely bloated with pastime-related commitments. They (okay \u2013 we) then have to juggle these commitments with each other and with the realities of life such as work, homemaking, home maintenance and home administration. And at that stage, the activities have become stealtimes rather than pastimes.<\/p>\n Activities that came about in order to pass time pleasantly have become burdensome. It becomes impossible, for example, to organize a gathering of family or friends within a month or so because everyone\u2019s diaries are full of other commitments. Even great-aunt Muriel can\u2019t make time for you until the second Friday of next month, and that date\u2019s free only because her book club is taking a week off while some of its members climb Kilimanjaro (and the only reason she\u2019s not going herself is that she doesn\u2019t like flying).<\/p>\n There are many reasons a person would take up a hobby, or a sport or other recreational activity, other than to pass the time. Here are a few: to keep fit; to indulge in something you enjoy but couldn\u2019t earn a living at; to mix with other people who share your interests; to help others realize some sort of ambition by helping in the background; to encourage your neighbourhood\/town to function as a community.<\/p>\n I\u2019m currently involved in the Scouting movement (as a Cub Scout Leader), in a community\/amateur theatre group (in many ways), and in a band that practises and plays quite infrequently. Until recently, I was also involved in my town\u2019s Planning Commission, and in a citizen group that was advocating new facilities for the arts and culture. In addition, I\u2019m someone that has trouble with the \u201cn\u201d word (that\u2019s \u201cno\u201d), so I find myself being roped into all sorts of other volunteer activities.<\/p>\n The result of having all these pastimes, combined with running my own business, makes it difficult to fit anything else in (unless it\u2019s a favour for someone, which strangely I frequently manage to do!). For example, if the band tries to arrange a rehearsal, I can\u2019t make it Mondays because it\u2019s Cubs, and oh \u2013 Tuesday might be a Theatre Group board meeting, and Wednesday\u2026 you get the idea. At least three other members of the band have similarly full diaries, so it doesn\u2019t take much imagination to realize why we don\u2019t rehearse very often, which in turn provides the answer to the question \u201cwhy don\u2019t you perform very often?\u201d<\/p>\n The point of all the foregoing is that those activities which are meant to be \u201cpleasant recreation or hobbies\u201d often become sources of stress, and not of the healthy variety.<\/p>\n I realize that I\u2019m either over-committed or totally inefficient at getting things done (or both), and I know I\u2019m not alone. I keep on threatening to give stuff up. In fact I already have, yet nature abhors a vacuum, so the time gets committed elsewhere. And I still don\u2019t have enough time, for example, to improve my writing to the point that I\u2019m happy with it, or to put my winter tires on my car before the first nasty snowstorm blows in. As far as Cub Scouts is concerned, I\u2019ve been saying \u201cjust one more year\u201d for over seven years; it\u2019s become expected, and doesn\u2019t even get a laugh or smile any more. I\u2019m pretty sure the cubs will be singing \u201cTom the Toad\u201d at my funeral at this rate.<\/p>\n The problem is that many of our pastimes have deadlines attached to them. Deadlines are good because they reduce procrastination, but to a certain extent, they\u2019re arbitrary \u2013 artificial. Crops won\u2019t fail, medicine won\u2019t be left undelivered, houses won\u2019t burn down if I don\u2019t get our theatre group\u2019s playbill to the printers by next Tuesday. The printer might have to put a rush on the job, or theatre patrons might have to go without the program for the first night, but ships won\u2019t sink, hospitals won\u2019t cease to function, and water won\u2019t stop flowing out of our taps. But timely readiness of the program is expected, so I stress out.<\/p>\n Hmmm\u2026 I\u2019m sure there are lots of people out there making tons of money telling people how they can make their \u201cpastime\u201d activities more conducive to a stress-free lifestyle. (If there aren\u2019t, then maybe that\u2019s something I should get onto!)<\/p>\n With all these labour-saving devices we have, we should have stacks of spare time. With few exceptions we don\u2019t have to wash clothes by hand, or iron everything, or make all our meals from scratch from vegetables we\u2019ve grown ourselves (although we may choose to, as a hobby); we don\u2019t have to take the carpets outside and beat the living daylights out of them; we don\u2019t need to spend the day under our car getting it working well enough to get us to work on Monday (although we may choose to, as a hobby).<\/p>\n So where is all that spare time?<\/p>\n The answers to that question and the bigger one of how to organize and control one\u2019s \u201cspare time\u201d activities are, I feel sure, much more complex than a 1200 word article could address. Certainly no light bulbs have turned on as a result of me writing this.<\/p>\n And honestly, I don\u2019t have enough time to think about it.<\/p>\n Is your life overflowing with \u201cpastime\u201d activities, or have you got life under control? Share your stories and your solutions (if you have any!) by leaving a comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hands up who\u2019s feeling there aren\u2019t enough hours in the day. Everyone? I thought so. Okay \u2013 hands up who has more than one hobby, or whose children have more than one evening activity. Everyone? I thought so. Hands up who doesn\u2019t want to give any of those pursuits up because they help bring balance to your life or your… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[488],"tags":[195,194,196,193],"class_list":["post-145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bbs","tag-full-diary","tag-hobbies","tag-overflowing-schedule","tag-pastimes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1647,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145\/revisions\/1647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Stealtime<\/h3>\n
Other Reasons for Pastimes<\/h3>\n
Crammed Diary<\/h3>\n
Stress<\/h3>\n
What’s the Answer?<\/h3>\n
Your Turn<\/h2>\n