When I read today’s prompt, I laughed. What do you enjoy doing most in your leisure time? And I asked myself, what leisure time? The time when I am watching my daughter play softball, or when I chase my smallest around the baseball park while his older brother is on the field with his dad practicing. Or is it when I am helping my husband cook, cleaning up after he cooks, or picking up the house after the kids go to bed? Maybe they meant that small window where parents fit in with their attention to each other and this thing called hobbies.
Although there is something that I sneak away to do. My husband doesn’t mind. He knows the moment I have a book to entertain myself with and he has time to play video games uninterrupted. I love disappearing in the pages of a good book. I bring my kindle everywhere, taking any chance I can get to escape into a different world. Sometimes I need it because I have to reset my way of thinking. When I am having trouble diffusing my frustrations, I pull out my book and separate myself from the problems at hand.
I will sacrifice a long, hot shower to have five more minutes to read. Sleep will be lost as one more chapter is gained. I don’t know why books have been my place of solace when I cannot produce images in my mind. I would think that movies or tv shows would captivate me more. But sometimes I’ve turned off what I am watching and read a book that I’m not really into. Maybe it’s because the written word dives deeper than a film/tv show could ever do. I love the details and inner works of the characters. Finding out what drives them and relating them to myself. I see myself in a relationship that is supposed to only exist in a fancy novel.
So what do I enjoy doing most in my leisure time…. Reading, without a doubt reading.
