Work and Leisure

210 Robert A. Stebbinsthe president calls an emergency meeting of the board of directors of a clubor an association. The sudden new obligation may uproot carefully madeplans involving family responsibilities of the volunteer and certain activitiesof its members. It also happens from time to time that community events(e.g., a talk, concert, reception, open house), many of which key volunteersfeel they ought to attend even when the events are not directly related to theirgroup or organisation, are mounted on short notice or broadly publicisedonly at the last minute. Again, family plans can be thrown into turmoil asparent-volunteers scramble to fill several roles at once. Citing excessive temporaltension as its main cause, a handful of interviewees also classifiedfatigue as a dislike, a dispiriting weariness that can sometimes develop,signalling impending burnout.In the same vein, weekend volunteer commitments – usually for Saturday– though rare and scheduled at that time chiefly because the organiser haslittle choice, are nevertheless disliked by some key volunteers. They lamentthat such commitments can extend the temporal tension yet anotherday, while belying the claim and promise that weekends are for family. Ofnote here was my nearly total lack of success (one exception) in obtainingSaturday interviews, even though I offered every respondent the opportunityfor one.ConclusionQuality of life, whether achieved through volunteering or through anotherform of serious leisure, is a state of mind that, to the extent people areconcerned with personal well-being, must be pursued with notable diligence.(Did we not speak earlier of career and perseverance?) Quality of life doesnot just ‘fall into one’s lap’, as it were, but requires desire, planning, andpatience, as well as a capacity to seek deep satisfaction through experimentationwith serious and casual leisure activities that hold the possibility ofbecoming solid elements in an optimal leisure lifestyle. Personal agency is thewatchword here. Leisure educators, leisure counsellors among them, canadvise and inform about various leisure activities that hold strong potentialfor quality of life, but it is the individual who must become motivated topursue them and develop a plan for doing so.Spector and Cohen-Gewerc (2000) write in this same vein about the processof ‘initiation’, a sort of self-directed personal actualisation. A personwho has free timeis at a crossroads, in which he has been given the opportunity to makegood use of the time which has now been ‘freed-up’ in the timetable ofhis personal life, by investing in his own self. This is an incredibleopportunity, however its fulfillment is entirely his own responsibility.(Spector and Cohen-Gewerc 2000: 3)