Time on Your Hands

Now for an idle, judgmental edition of…

SHUT THE HELL UP!!!!

People who use the profoundly asinine phrase “You have way too much time on your hands” or any variation thereof. It always crops up when someone demonstrates any amount of knowledge or not-so-important accomplishment that would require a lot of time devoted to it, or would at least seem like it. The knowledge or accomplishment may or may not be something trivial, or maybe just something the other person doesn’t like or understand. Usually it’s when someone thinks hard about something that in the grand scheme of things may seem unimportant.

Trivial or not, what the hell is wrong with, you know, thinking about something? Or observing something? If someone spends all day counting the times the word “log” was used in the entire first season of Star Trek, then that’s their choice and how they want to spend their time, and it’s not up to you to decide it’s worthless. Besides, what are you doing that is apparently of greater worth than the Star Trek thing? Working in a soup kitchen? Reading to sick kids are the hospital? No, I think you’re sitting on your couch watching Bewitched and scratching your balls. Yeah, real superior.

Also, just what is wrong with having free time? Why is that in and of itself such a sin? We’re way overscheduled in our society, to the point that we start thinking if someone is not scheduled to be doing something, then they are unproductive and useless. You’d think we should at least try to not act like a bunch of damn Puritans. Because, really, that is what this is about. Puritans believe you should just work all the time and never sit still for a minute, because God hates that. Further, and where I think this hatred of free time comes from, is perhaps the idea that if your hands aren’t busy with something useful, then you’ll of course be masturbating, and we all know God really hates that! 🙄

So, if you are in fact a Puritan and you use this phrase, that makes sense. But for those of you normal people who aren’t Puritans, why are you acting like them? Can you provide a real reason for this contempt for someone who *gasp* isn’t working in some productive meaningful (by your own personal definition, of course) way? No, you can’t.

Admit it. You mock the Star Trek fan for the aforementioned word count as if you know better than he does how he should be spending his time, when the truth is, he’s the luckier one since you seem unable to find anything you find so enjoyable. Especially when you limit it to “socially acceptable” uses of time.

Loser.