I'm SO tired of people telling me "You have entirely too much time on your hands" or "you have too much free time". Well really, I don't. Why do I care? It's an insult to me, and it's dismissive.

I know I'm talented. That's not ego talking, it's just truth. However, we all are in some regard, in something in life. I know that I am that artsy type, if you want to call it that. I create things. Now whether they're spectacular, or other people like them, or not really isn't up to me. Beauty is in someone else's eye, as they say. I put pen to paper, I write music, I take pictures, I do stuff in Paint Shop Pro, and I can even give you a great haircut, and even cook you dinner to rock your socks. I wish I had more time and resources to take the pictures I really want. I wish I had the knowledge to edit the pictures the way I really want to. I wish I had the musical prowess of someone like my friend Jason Kirby to play anything I hear, at any time, and master the fuck out of it.

I had a neighbor from upstairs down here the other day. Sweet girl, in her late 20's I think. She was here to talk to my roommate. The Apple TV was on screen saver mode, and was displaying some pictures, some of which were a few of my 365 pictures (some of the more recent interesting ones). She saw a few of the pics and said I had too much free time.

A friend of mine, who is also on Facebook, posted a comment last week or week before that he decided I had entirely too much free time on my hands. I deleted the comment with no fanfare. I didn't want to make a big deal of it to him. It's why I'm keeping this more general to anyone and everyone. It's OFFENSIVE!

Another friend, rolls his eyes at most anything I do. I think he'd actually choke if he had to pay a compliment on something I created. He's never gotten excited with me when I've come up with something new, whether it's a song, or a painting, or a picture. He kind of smirks, rolls his eyes, and moves on. It crushes me every time. It's another reason I've withdrawn from him even more. I cannot trust him to share anything with him.

I wonder if anyone ever told Jimi Hendrix he had too much free time on his hands? Or how about the guys from The Beatles? Did they have too much free time? They changed the face of music. Or how about Jonas Salk? We'd still have polio, or it would have been cured later than the mid 50's, if he had too much free time on his hands. I wonder if someone told Marie Curry she had too much free time, or they dismissed her and rolled their eyes at her, if she'd have felt the same way?

What should our time be filled with doing, I wonder. In this age, we are filled to the brim with texting, taking and sending pics over our phones, blogging, keeping up on Facebook, Myspace, Friendster, Flickr, Livejournal, Last.FM, YouTube, and a dozen other sites. So what have we filled our free time with? Cruising for sex, venting about the woes of life, or whatever it is we do to fill our free time. I am not sure when having free time became a crime in society. Is it a sign of less-than if someone just has a lot of free time one day? If their weekend isn't filled up with parties, errands, and dates, perhaps others look at them as having "no life". The statement then becomes about those who are missing out on "life" because they're so bogged down with a self-imposed state of business and importance. See and be seen. Long ago we lost the ability to just sit and enjoy the silence. Nope, we can't do that. We have to be somewhere, do something, do someone, have all 10 of our fingers in someone's pie at any given time. Then.......then, when those people go home, tired as all fuckery, getting in late, tossing their keys on the table, kicking off their shoes, petting the cat and eventually heading to bed, they hate that they're only going to get six hours of sleep instead of the 7.5 they've become used to. But God forbid they have "all that free time" on their hands. Kind of makes people into hypocrites a bit, doesn't it? They lust after the very thing they make fun of others for having: Free time.

So the next time someone does something funny or creative or something that says they're staying true to themselves, think twice before you dismiss their efforts and say they have too much time on their hands. Perhaps you're just too stupid to appreciate what someone else does for you, to you, or just shares with you. Perhaps you're just that self-absorbed. If you do, you can fuck off. It's not funny, as a joke, or otherwise.