"Too much time on your hands"

[daphnep]

I'm nominating this phrase as one of my most loathed

Comments

[cjsmith]

Interesting thought. Mostly I hear the "too much time" complaint from people who are, say, in med school. (Veterinary school in my case.) They genuinely don't have a ton of free time, for a while, and that while can seem pretty long when you're a few years in. In these cases, the gripe is really about that, not about whatever craft the random Internet person has produced. I'm OK with that kind of usage, I guess.

I have a slightly-related mental reflex to the phrase "I don't have the time for ___________". Immediate response from my brain: every one of us gets 24 hours a day, 168 hours a week. Nobody gets any more or less than that. (We can be richer or poorer in money, and it's true that money can get some chores done and "free up" a bit of time, but even a billionaire has to choose what fits into twenty-four hours and what won't.) We all set our own individual priorities. I'm trying to be honest with myself when I don't "have" the time: I don't CHOOSE TO TAKE the time to do _______. That way I can recognize what I'm happier doing. :)

[daphnep]

Exactly. I often think the same response: we all get exactly the same amount of time--we just choose to use it differently.

I mean, really: who the hell has time for vet school? ;)

[cjsmith]

Ha! Too true. I manage to take multiple sets of bottle-baby kittens per semester, and then I pet other students' dogs and say something about how I "don't have the time" to raise and train my own dog effectively. Sure I don't -- as long as I keep choosing to use that time to bottle-feed kittens (and, y'know, study and go to class) instead!