Leisure time

Thanks to my new commuting arrangement I know have 64 minutes (31 there, 33 back) of time spent just sitting available to me every day, by which I mean time I spend sitting on the train waiting for it to deliver me to my destination.

At the moment I am spending this looking out of the window and thoroughly appreciating that I don’t live in all the places I pass through without exception but most specifically Hayes and Slough which quite frankly look like hell on earth. However, smugly staring out of the window and being condescending about other people’s neighbourhoods is not going to keep me entertained for long.

Now I don’t want to think of this 64 minutes as ‘dead time’ where I have to sit and wait for the train to do its thing, nor do I really want to get into the mindset of ‘this is my commute, deal with it.’ I would rather consider this 64 minutes as additional ‘leisure time’ that I have been blessed with. So what should I do with my new leisure time?

The easiest option is obviously reading. Many of my fellow partakers of leisure time on the train engage in this activity, either in the form of books or the day’s newspaper. I can’t say I am so much up for the newspaper thing as I somewhat resent having to pay for the days news when it is quite freely available and much more personally customisable on the internet. I am open to the option of reading a book though and no doubt will be taking my current choice of literature, Life of Pi by Yann Martell, with me in the foreseeable future.

In a worldly kind of way I have considered perhaps investing in some self-improvement tools. Using the time to learn another language maybe or study up on history or professional development however, lets face it, I am not going to be in the mood for this kind of thing in the early morning or immediately after work so no matter how good my intentions, its probably not going to happen.

What I really want is to pursue the high tech route. I would like a PSP and an I-pod or other similar music playing device both of which I think are pretty self explanatory. However the Holy Grail probably has to be a laptop computer; something nice and small and light and functional (and would supersede the desire for a PSP or I-pod device).

For example, I have done, but generally don’t, spend around an hour constructing blog posts. With a laptop I could, mood permitting, use my new leisure time to construct posts for the blog which I think would be a fantastic use of the time. It is something I enjoy doing anyway and slotting it into leisure time seems to be a perfect match. The laptop also has the added bonus of being usable for other things such as regular work, planning aid work, computer games or offending fellow passengers by viewing porn (ok not really) etc. The laptop does of course require a rather large and self indulgent chunk of cash though. One I can’t really justify at the moment, particularly given my current rash spending on lunch and breakfast (now generally a large coffee and a chocolate croissant or bagel) as well as other essential house moving items.

So for the time being I think I am going to be restricted to the book option which is fine… for now.