Leisure and Lifestyle

At the beginning of this course leisure was a topic I did not give much thought to and I felt like I did not have the time to spare to put much thought into. To me, all leisure meant was having free time to do whatever it is that I wanted to do. But after analyzing my life I noticed that I had surrounded my life with solely work and school and my “free time” was anytime I spent watching television and anytime I slept. However, after taking this course I learned that leisure meant more much than that. Now leisure to me means, as Richard Kraus states, leisure is “time which is not devoted to work or work-connected responsibilities or to other forms of discretionary or unobligated time,” (Olson et al., 2003, 12). The “time” in which Kraus mentions, I personally see as the time that one takes for oneself and fulfills that time with an activity that provides personal satisfaction. To one person, the act of watching television may be satisfying; on the other hand, I personally think that an active activity can only provide satisfaction or any activity that stirs away from or does not produce boredom. Unfortunately, our society views leisure as something that cannot be accomplished or cannot be apart of life because there is not enough time. This paper will be a reflection of several issues that this summer semester course and textbook discussed, such as balancing work and leisure, time management, and boredom; I will be discussing my leisure lifestyle plan as well.
Throughout the summer course, an issue that was consistently presented through our class discussions and through our textbook was the balancing of work and leisure. The discussions always seemed to come down to the argument that many people simply could not balance work and leisure. It seemed to most to be one or the other. For example, after completing our interviews I, along with many students in my class, noticed a common similarity with our interviewees. We noticed that the most popular excuse for not