Leisurely Pursuits

Last night I had dinner with me coven of bestest female friends - and one of them was talking about her shopping habit. Suffice to say it's a reasonably...umm...robust (ooh, good word!) ...habit. While the rest of them were oohing and aahhing over the dollar amounts and the sheer volume of purchases, all I wanted to know was how on earth she had the TIME for all this shopping.

Me being me, I asked her. "Good God, when the hell does one have the TIME to do all that shopping?"

The answer to this is two fold - one, shopping is in some sense a hobby, so she makes time for it with quick trips to the mall in the very same way I will sneak in a quick chapter or two of a book. Two, she will shop for herself on trips to the mall whose main purpose is to buy stuff for her kids - as in, "I'll just swing past KMart, Target, the kids' shoe store.....and Fossill/Tiffany & Co/Nine West." Admittedly, I hate shopping - of any kind - and so it would never occur to me to just 'swing by' the mall in the first place. Having to faff about with parking, then wandering past and into a bunch of shops which contain things I cannot afford nor wish to store, then buying something or not, then dragging it home, then getting home through traffic...oh it just all seems like so much damn trouble, how on earth would someone want to do this at times when they don't have to?

Honestly, I didn't really understand it...but then it occured to me that she probably looks at  my life and thinks, who on earth has time for... baking bread from scratch, going to the gym a million times a week, reading 3 novels a week, blogging, facebooking...and so on. Fact is we all spend time (or more accurately, CHOOSE to spend time) on our various pursuits, and to each person the pursuit is different. My friend Claire is an amazing sewer (seamstress? quilter? what's the right word here?) and she creates stunning quilts, toys, clothes, aprons...she's amazing. I have no idea how to find the time for that - but I'd like to. Biz Guy and DH are both into mindless TV (yet another thing I don't understand how people have time for! Especially Dr Who, but that's another post altogether). Other friends spend their time food photographing and blogging, going to endless concerts, engaging in hours of online/phone sex (nope, not kidding), buying wine, collecting stuff via Ebay, cooking...whatever. We each have our own way of winding down, of tuning out, of making the everyday noise and madness of our lives just hush up for a while.

Funnily enough, prior to thinking about this whole shopping thing, I probably would have said my life has very little room for inherently selfish pursuits. I would have told you I spend all my time working, sleeping, or thinking about either working or sleeping. In writing this post, though, I've come to realise that I actually do spend some time in leisure activities (as listed above, and that's not even all of them).

I blogged a little while ago about a quote I read which said, "If it's important to you, you'll make time. If it's not, you'll make excuses." So I guess to my friend, shopping is important - just like to me (being the card carrying member of the nerd squad that I am), reading a ridiculous amount of mostly poorly written chick-lit books is important enough for me to make the time for.

What are you making time for these days?