“You have too much time on your hands.”

Let’s just nip this one in the bud, shall we?

Someone is going to read this blog, or see my layout, and utter the phrase “You have too much time on your hands.”

It’s going to happen, I know it. It’s happened before.

This phrase will most likely be typed in an internet comment, one of several thousand comments that person has probably posted that day. After closing up their computer they’ll turn the TV on and switch between a football game and a reality TV show. Wouldn’t want to waste time now, would they?

I wasted time setting up my telescope and camera to take this shot when I could have been watching sports on TV.

I’m not one for hyperbole, but the phrase “you have too much time on your hands” is probably the dumbest phrase in the entire history of phrases. I’m pretty sure phrases were invented some time in the 1700s, so that’s a pretty long history.

Here’s the thing: Nobody has TOO MUCH time. Most of us don’t have enough.

When we’re told we have too much time on our hands it’s implied that our time would be better spent sitting in a cubicle typing TPS reports or cleaning spilled oil from orphaned penguins in the Antarctic. Time, it seems, is too precious to waste creating a train layout or building a martini mixing machine out of Lego bricks, or doing anything that might seem pointless to someone who lacks imagination.

I have a job. I spend enough time in a cubicle, thank you very much. I even like my job most days. Still, when I spend my time creating something it fills me with pride and satisfaction that I rarely get anywhere else.

My creativity comes in spurts. I’ll spend months not writing anything, building anything, programming anything, or strumming anything, so when I do get a burst of creativity you better believe I’m going to take advantage of it. I’m going to “waste” my precious, precious, time writing or building or programming or strumming.

I built this for The Boy instead of working on a way to bring clean water to drought-stricken areas.

We should all spend more time doing things we enjoy.

So yeah, tell me I have too much time on my hands. Or better yet, don’t.