Free Time: The Struggle

You're damned if you have it, you're damned if you don't.

The sole reason you spent an unimaginable amount of money getting a higher degree of education: you've finally graduated onto bigger and better things. You can finally use your postsecondary educational skills to further your career in life and begin the conformist life of that 9-5 (but really 8-6:30 if you include commuting and preparation).

Suddenly, sitting in your beginner's cubicle and not just doing administrative work because your boss doesn't know what other busy work to give you, you start to realize that your position in society is not just a summer internship to put on the "work experience" portion of your resume. You are an actual person of society with real work that actually counts if you don't perform it properly. It is at this stage in your life that you realize just how much you took free time for granted.

You think back to all of those breaks in college that were far too long and you spent way too much of watching TV, playing on your phone, or browsing on your computer. You begin to regret all of these lazy decisions and tell yourself how much more you will appreciate free time if given the opportunity. You begin thinking about how you should have taken up those piano lessons you always wanted to take but were too lazy to do, those acting courses to try your hand at it, learn a new language, etc. How dare your past-self take for granted such sweet and meaningful free time. All the things you could have accomplished during that time to bring you higher up on the success scale upon graduation.

Then again, once you're finally given the opportunity to have this free time you claimed you would definitely take advantage of you begin to understand exactly why you were so lazy back in the day: you needed that free time. You begin to understand just how important it was to be as lazy as you want. And once you finally have that free time are you actually going to go out and do all of the things you claimed you would do? Probably not no, but you will sit there remembering why you hated your free time so much: you get so freaking bored not being preoccupied and there is only so much time in the world to balance all of the things you want to do.

This is where time management comes in handy: organizing your precious free time to correspond to your not-so-free-time is exactly what helps you achieve all of those goals you wrote in macaroni-colored crayons in first grade.

Give yourself a break, or two, or three, and let your free time be free.