Leisure time or free time is the type of time in which people don’t have to work, time when they can do whatever they like, I view it as a time of relaxation and fun. Some people say they cannot draw a line between their job and free time – their profession is their hobby. Psychologists claim that people whose hobby is different from their profession are much happier because they switch to a new activity in their leisure time which is beneficial for them. They are more efficient when they start working again.
Hobbies can be divided into active and passive, spread and rare, expensive and cheap, intellectual and artistic, etc. There are many types of hobbies one can choose from. On average the most common hobby of adult people in country is gardening. Many families have cottages in the countryside where people grow fresh fruits and vegetables. Older people, who are married and have families may choose useful leisure activities like gardening, doing repairs, decorating the house, car maintenance or plumbing. Manual work brings them relaxation. When they paint the window frames or repair the roof they have a sense of achievement. Young people are keen on sport activities. Boys are into playing football, basketball, tennis or ice hockey. Girls choose gymnastics, athletics or swimming. At present many young people go to fitness centres to be slim and to keep fit.
With the gradual decrease in the number of working hours and longer holidays than in the past, many people have quite a lot of leisure time, and a wide variety of ways to spend it. Some people use their free time to work more, relax, either actively or passively, but more and more people are doing volunteer work, especially for charities or political parties. A lot of free time is spent sitting passively at home there the most popular activities are watching TV, reading the newspaper or a magazine, playing computer games, surfing the Internet or just chatting with a neighbour over a cup of coffee. Our consumer way of life has even changed the way we spend our free time, many adults now spend their Saturdays or Sundays shopping at the nearest supermarket while many city young people meet friends at large shopping centres or malls just to hang out.
Free-time activities vary from season to season. In summer, gardening is popular among middle-aged and elderly people. Some grow fruit and vegetables while others simply enjoy watching their green lawns grow so they can mow them. In winter, many men often work on ‘do-it-yourself’ projects around the house, like building shelves or re-modelling the bathroom. Although not as popular as in the past, many women still enjoy knitting and sewing on cold winter evenings. Many young men and boys enjoy going to the local rink or pond to play some ice-hockey once the weather is cold enough. One more way some people spend their leisure time during the long winter is by attending the theatre, concerts, art exhibitions and the cinema. Spring is the time for ‘spring cleaning’, when many families set to cleaning windows, cleaning out cupboards and sorting through old clothes. The warm weather also brings out children of all ages on skateboards, rollerblades and bikes. Hiking, rock climbing and long walks in the woods looking for mushrooms are also favourite in good weather. Also many use their free weekends to go to their cabins, cottages or country-houses no matter what the season is.
Most people work hard and come home so tired that they do not want to have to think. Watching TV is one way they can turn off. Psychological dramas are often too mentally and emotionally demanding so sitcoms, quiz shows, variety shows and reality programmes are becoming more and more popular. Another leisure time activity, which is not as popular today as in the past is reading. Reading newspaper or magazines, though, is still very popular. Lots of people spend hours reading their horoscope, checking the latest sports scores, reading about the latest scandal and doing crossword puzzles. Other enjoy cutting out various recipes or beauty tips, while still others try entering the various contests and competitions offered by most magazines.
For those people who are not too tired after a long day at work, there is one more possibility: education. People who live and work at the present, they need to have a variety of educational backgrounds. Many state and private companies require their staff to be university educated so many of their employees, of all ages, spend their free time studying part-time at different universities. And thousands of people spend hundreds of hours every year learning foreign languages, like English and German. For some people hobby means collecting objects of interests – stamps, postcards, badges, model cars or ships, coins, bottles, antiques. Collecting has been popular, and there are a lot of collectors who attend special shows and take a chance to swap and exchange their treasures, but it is becoming less and less popular at the present, especially with young generation, that prefers to play computer games instead.
Our school offers a variety of extracurricular activities. We can get better for example in sports, math, programming, etc. Our school does even have TV studio for those interested in that stuff. They are making reportages about school events or something interesting happening in the school. They upload it on YouTube, so everybody can watch them.
Some students, who can appreciate some extra money, they can find a part-time job. When they finish school, they usually go directly to work. Although they don’t make more money, than full-time employees, the extra money can be helpful.
A lot of people enjoy arts and, in their free time go in for amateur painting, drawing, singing and dramatics. For many people the most popular art form is music. It is quite common to see teenagers walking down the street with headsets on. Listening to music is nowadays possible literally everywhere. But if you should, that’s a different question, some people are listening to music almost all day. That’s no good, then you lose the great feeling the music can evoke in you. You need to mix the genres and authors of the music you are listening to, or you will become numb or fed up of it. For example I mainly listen to some kind of rock, punk-rock, but I also mix it with a bit of pop, jpop, indie, future funk, synthwave, blues, 90s, 00s, etc. I really appreciate bands like Franz Ferdinand, Billy Talent, Take That, Green Day, Sum 41, The Offspring, Horkýže slíže and solo singers Robbie Williams, Hugh Laurie. Music has become profession, hobby and an inseparable part of lifestyle of many people. Many youngsters take music lessons as they want to learn to play a musical instrument. Those who love modern music often start to play the guitar or the drums and decide to found a band. They spend a lot of time practicing to be able to give concerts to large audiences.
As for reading, I am not that keen into it, mainly because I don’t have neither e-book reader nor that big collection of books. But many people are still sticking to reading books. Maybe the newer generations don’t appreciate them, like older generations do, but the books nowadays cannot be eradicated completely.
Some people view housework as hobby, and many others hate them, where is the truth? People sometimes can create affection to those activities, they need to do every day. It becomes a habit, but that doesn’t mean you will like it doing. It matters individually, based on someone’s preferences.
Also there is a beautiful nature here in Slovakia, many people are using it for their enjoyment, relaxation or sport. You can walk through the forest, go picking mushrooms, swim in a lake, go fishing or climb a mountain.
In the past people spent more time out of their homes because they didn´t have so many games or computers, televisions and videogames as we do have now. They spent a lot of time with their friends, and when they got money they used to go to the cinema on weekends. Nowadays we hardly ever go to the cinema, because it is more convenient to download movies that we want to see, from the Internet. People in the past were longer outside because they wanted to see and talk to their friends, but today we spend more time inside our houses, because we don´t need to go out to communicate with our friends. We just need to turn on our computer, or our mobile phones and we can speak to anybody all over the world. But there are things that have kept unchanged. Young people in the past liked to practise sport together and so do young people in the present. It´s a fun way of working out and spending time with friends is something that was and still is very popular between young people. Because it cannot be easily replaced, personal contact is something that makes a human whole. We are social creatures and the technology is far from the experience you can get from personal contact. Yes, it is amazing, that you can even see and speak to person on the other side of the world, but the experience is missing the word “personal”.