Entertainment Overload

Before I go on talking about my wealth of entertainment and complaining about what to do next I want to point out that this really isn’t a bad place to be, I could find myself in the middle of a war zone close to being shot everyday or in the middle of a famine having to drink dirty water and not having eaten for days.

Now on to the point of the post.

I, like so many others in the developed world have to much entertainment and not enough time to enjoy it all.

My average week is split four ways: work, family, sleep and me.

The majority of my awake time is split between work and family - I spend around 40 hours a week working (probably more as I spend time at home working as well but official it’s about 40 hours).

I then spend around 37 hours a week with my family, an hour in the morning before work, two hours in the evening after work (before the kids go to sleep and my wife starts watching Big Brother or the Soaps) and all day Saturday and Sunday.

I try to get to bed by 23:00 every night so I get enough sleep for the next day (doesn’t always happen), this means I’m left with around 3 hours every evening to myself, add the hour a day for lunch (monday-friday) and I get around 26 hours a week to myself.

At first glance 26 hours sounds like a lot of time for just doing things for me, but when you look at the number of things competing for my attention you start to see why that isn’t much time at all.

There are so many forms of entertainment competing for my 26 hours that I really struggle to fit them all in.

Right now I’ve got podcasts, dvds, video podcasts*, tv, radio, cinema, magazines, newspapers, live music, theatre, stand-up, blogs, you tube, message boards, books, writing, guitar, photography, computer games…

Because my time is limited and pretty structured, that means that linear tv is pretty much out of the question for me unless its a big one off event like a world cup match.

Fortunatly with the BBC, Channel 4 and ITV signing deals with indie producers to put their shows online for up to a month and the BBC & Channel 4 already doing it, my life is a little easier.

I don’t need to find ‘alternative’ ways of watching my favourite shows - all I need now is a way to legally buy my favourite American shows (hello iTunes - time to wake up in the UK please)!

Most of the shows I watch take up about an hour each, so lets say I watch five shows a week, add in say a movie and a couple of episodes from a tv show on dvd, a few hours of reading (books, newspapers and magazines) and we’re already down to about 15 hours left.

Throw in the 10 hours or so I spend online in my spare time (work can suck up some of this), blogging, reading message boards, looking around you tube, watching video podcast and doing the various others things you do online (like reading BBC News, listening to new music on My Space…) and there is about 5 hours left for me.

I spend 30 minutes a day practicing the guitar which brings us down to just 1 and half hours left of me time - this is about enough time to take a few photos on my lunchbreak.

As you can see this doesn’t leave enough time for listening to music or podcasts - I solved this by using the 40 minutes a day I spend walking to and from work and any other walking I have to do (into town, to meetings, even up and down stairs) to listen to podcasts.

Everything else just goes out the window, I don’t have time to take calls from people on Skype, I rarely go out to gigs, I never get to stand-up show or the theatre and haven’t touched a computer game in months.

In fact since buying my Playstation 2 a couple of years ago I’ve played it about four times and I have a bucket full of games for the PC that aren’t even loaded on my machine.

The only games I actually get time to play are ones I can sneak in while waiting for a bus, standing outside a shop waiting for my wife, sitting on a bus/train/taxi or sometimes while listening to a podcast walking home (although if I’m listening to music I use this time to read).

Every spare moment of my life is taken up with some form of entertainment or activity - what ever happened to my teenage attitude to ‘free’ time - lie on my bed, turn the music up and just chill!

Sphere: Related Content