Time and Happiness
20 August 2004 8:38 pm
Let's suppose that the minimum that you need in order to achieve happiness is 2 hours of your life every day to spend as you please, which works out to 60 hours worth of time-out a month (based on a 30-day month), which is 2.5 days or a whole weekend inclusive of Friday. So either you devote 2 hours each day to rest, relaxation and/or entertainment, or you go on a weekend getaway every month, or at least spend one weekend a month unwinding at home, doing absolutely nothing remotely related to work.
So now I apply this formula to my life and see if my leisure time works out to 2 hours a day/2.5 days a month. I work 12-hour days Monday to Friday. I sleep 6 hours every night. I spend an hour getting ready for work, an hour getting to and from work. 2 hours to get out of my work clothes, take a shower, do something about dinner, and iron the clothes for tomorrow. That leaves me with the 2 hours of R & R that's supposed to keep me sane. Say I spend these 2 hours watching TV and/or reading myself to sleep. I should wake up the next day happy as a clam and all raring to go, right?
Fuck, no.
If I have to do laundry, that's 0.5 hours off my R & R. If I go grocery-shopping, that'd be 0.5 to 1 hour off. And if I have a pile of grading to do, I will have fuck-all for leisure that night. Not only that, I sometimes have to take away an hour from my beauty sleep and probably wake up with a new spot on my face. Grrreat. So maybe I can make up for the lost leisure time during the weekend. But I never get a 100% work-free weekend. There's always grading that gets carried over to the weekend, because it is not humanly possible to read and grade 80 horrendously-written essays in 2 to 3 hours. Sometimes you have to pause after an essay, especially after a spectacularly incoherent one, and do deep breathing exercises to normalise your blood pressure and erase violent thoughts from your mind.
So I'm fucked. I am not giving myself enough Me Time. I can't afford to. An extra hour of TV means an hour less of sleep, which is a stupid thing to do because it turns me into a walking minefield the next day. You'd better be good at Minesweeper.
I wonder, what is the critical deficit point? How many hours of leisure can you do without before you come undone? Before your body fails you and you fall ill, or you lose the motivation to work, to get up every morning, to live? Have I approached that critical point? Did I just ask myself a rhetorical question? Is this a sign of insanity? Should I continue this entry? Are you going to take me off your favourites list? Are you still reading this? Are your out of your mind? Do you love me that much?
Older entries
Ramadan - 08 October 2006
Where I Have Been - 03 October 2006
Baby Talk - 10 August 2006
6 Weeks of Separation - 16 July 2006
Unacceptable Rudeness - 21 June 2006