http://www.bls.gov/tus/charts/
this site is interesting–it’s a bunch of graphs from the bureau of labor statistics about how americans spend their time. i’ve always wondered about how we use our time.
they could have broken down “leisure and sports time” more. The subcategories seem pretty vague. though i have confirmed what i thought all along. TV is by far our national pastime. i’m watching more TV now that i live with my parents again, but it’s usually only news/politics. (right now it’s baseball playoffs as well). i probably watched on average three minutes of TV in college. i wonder why people find TV fascinating. they talk about this show and that show. three minutes of unrelatable, irrelevant characters and irrelevant plots interrupted by seven minutes of headache-inducing eye sugar in carnival colors telling you to buy this shit and that shit. here’s what I say:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlKL_EpnSp8
except every time i try to do that, i get bored and my mind wanders. my eyes lose focus on the pages and then i look up and wonder. either that or i fall asleep. i wonder if most americans are conscious of how they use their free time. do they think they should use it productively, or do they say fuck it! it’s free time, i’ll do whatever I want.
weird how the average working american over 15 works 8.7 hours a weekday while the just plain average american over 15 works 3.5 hours. ummm, is unemployment really that big? who’s working and who isn’t? do some people do what they love to do and consider their work leisure time? what percent of americans say they love their job? just kinda like their job? hate their job? how many have had the future people take their jobs? durka der???
i’m also wondering why this fascinates me. maybe because i want to compare myself against this notion of the average that doesn’t exist in reality but is a somewhat useful tool for reducing down to stats such as these. maybe because madison is such a unique community that i’m out of touch with the rest of this insane place. maybe it’s just my mind wandering from whenever i go running or when i sit down and try to read.
