Why Listen to Me?

Who am I to hold forth on leisure, especially if it as fundamental as I insist? I am not any sort of scientist, in or out of academia, nor do I have an advanced degree. With a master’s degree in human resource management and a blue-collar job, I like to call myself an applied philosopher, though most would identify me by my job title: firefighter. What’s important, however, is not my label, but my actions. I’ve spent my entire adult life trying to live a philosophy, pursuing an integrated life where actions are consistent with ideals.

If this blog is worth reading, it’s because I’ve bet my whole life on its contents. I just haven’t thought through some of the problems that conventional ideas of leisure contain, I’ve lived them. In fact, I’m still living out the consequences of some earlier, not-so-wise decisions. Change is possible, but the costs are too high for the moment, especially the moral costs. Among other things, this book is an attempt to save others the trouble of repeating my mistakes.

Also, I don’t come to leisure unprepared. I graduated from a leading program at the top of my class. As an older, full-time graduate student, I was working a 56 hour/week job, leading contract negotiations as union president, and filling the roles of husband, father of three toddlers, and home-remodeler. When I completed graduate school, I was ready for a break and I took one. I hung the hammock my girls gave me for father’s day on the porch I’d just built, cracked a beer, and started contemplating the idea of leisure with my feet in the breeze. I started reading about leisure, and the more I read, the less I was satisfied with proffered explanations. I took a stab at a definition, didn’t like where it lead, and tried again. Time and again I tried and failed to live up to my own words, and this is how I arrived at the idea of pathologies of leisure – ideas that lead to undesirable social outcomes.

I didn’t usually walk these blind alleys all the way to their end – after a point I could make out the wall in the distance, but even if I learned to avoid breaking my nose by walking fast around blind corners, each false start had real costs in time and energy. It had emotional costs too: I learned through long practice to sacrifice comfortable assumptions with dispatch, and get on with productive thinking and living. The process changed me. I think and hope it can change you too, because improving our understanding of leisure opens whole new avenues for its appreciation, and so the enjoyment and productive use of life. If that appeals, listen to me. If not, this isn’t the book for you, at least not now. Either way, fare thee well.