What do you enjoy doing most in your leisure time?

I spent almost 50 years of my life getting up each and every day and going to work. A lot of my work involved writing proposals, presentations, analysis documents. I also interacted with coworkers, clients, prospective clients. I even tried to find some time on weekends to write The Great American Novel, but never got very far.

Then, at the end of 2016, I retired. No more proposals, presentations, coworkers, clients, prospective clients. Just me and my wife (and the kids when they found time in their own busy lives to visit with us). Suddenly I had an abundance of leisure time. An over abundance, actually.

So, what should I do with myself and all of this new found leisure time? I wondered. After a month or so into my retirement, my wife apparently got tired of me just hanging around and always being underfoot. She said to me, “Hey, you like to write. Why don’t you start a blog?” It was actually more of a demand than a question. Then she said, “That will keep you busy and out of my hair. You’re driving me crazy.”

I thought about that for a minute. Hmm, okay, I could express my points of view on the world around me and publish them on the internet, where they would be out there for anyone to stumble upon, virtually speaking. And maybe some people actually would stumble upon my blog posts and enjoy what I wrote. Maybe some would even responded to my posts. Comment on them.

Maybe not just my family and friends, whom I would tell about my new hobby, but total strangers from around the world would read, like, and comment on my posts. Maybe I could actually form connections with a large and vibrant community of other bloggers.

So I started blogging. It felt great to see my thoughts, perspectives, ideas, notions, and opinions “in print” for all the world to see. I discovered flash fiction and realized that, while I was unlikely to ever write the Great American Novel, I was a decent very short story writer and blogging allowed me to hone those skills and get almost immediate feedback from those who read them.

I discovered that there were writing prompts to help bloggers like me come up with something to write about and to post on our blogs. I even started creating prompts of my own to help nudge and inspire other bloggers to come up with ideas for their posts.

So, with all of what I just wrote as background, the short answer to today’s WordPress Daily Prompt is that what I enjoy doing most in my leisure time is blogging. And as the photo at the top of this post suggests, I do almost all of my blogging on my smartphone.