[hoaw2]

To take the example at hand, for many young(ish) people taking time off work to learn electronics wouldn't necessary be a nice experience. Because their lives exist to a large extent in relation to work. They have moved to a new city, because of work. Where the live in a small apartment, to be close to work. They have friends, from work. And they have coffee on their way to work, to talk about work or even to do work.

They couldn't just take time off and have a similar life. By leaving work they would lose a lot of the connection to their de facto lives. It wouldn't be worth living in an expensive city, in a small apartment and have expensive coffee "just" to learn electronics. Increasingly the things in people's lives aren't "neutral". Their small apartments are made for going to work from, not necessarily for doing things in. But you can't necessarily move either without losing context.

On the other hand if you are already established. You have a house, a family, friends outside work and whatever else you need, it isn't necessarily that hard to go down in the basement and learn electronics instead of going to work for six months out of the year. Because your environment is "neutral" and exists whether you go to work short-term or not. A lot of people aren't really established like that though.

[52-6F-62]

To me, your example sounds more like a lifestyle choice, my friend.

My advice to the person in question would be to pull your head out of work and sample a little more of that big city while you're paying so much to be there.

There's no reason why every moment of time that isn't paid for by work to be spent on work, outside of that being a choice (given our current example, which sounds like a well-enough-to-do tech worker).

Personally, I couldn't live that way, and I'm probably filling out a few of your checkboxes above. I like the people I work with, but I value [and fear] time too much to give it all into my job—be it tasks, networking, socializing, whatever.

The example you extended sounds more like a problem of agency than one of [a lack of] leisure.

[hoaw3]

> The example you extended sounds more like a problem of agency than one of [a lack of] leisure.

It is. But you can't just take time of work, not replace it with anything and expect to be able to have some sort of leisure. At least not in my experience. I don't live in a big city anymore, but that doesn't really fix things. The equation is as hard as in a city, just in a different way. That is why people like 'bunnie' who do electronics as a passion end up in Asia. There are just so much easier to live and so many more things to do. People who stay e.g. in the US end up moving around different small to medium size cities instead looking for something that makes sense.