Yay! Sleep! That's Where I'm a Viking!

I just discovered that I spend roughly 38% of my time sleeping. It doesn't seem possible. Or does it? I kept track of my activities last week for a project. It only covered 5 days, however, so it wasn't a full week. I don't know if it can be called an accurate sample of my time spending behavior, but I will treat it as such nonetheless. When you break it down to hours in a day and the recommended amount of sleep, I'm not too far off the mark. 24 hours in a day divided by 8 hours of recommended sleep (I read it somewhere) equals 33% of the day being spent asleep. Roughly speaking. You get the idea. So while it was initially shocking to think that I spend that much time asleep, factoring in the recommended 33% makes my 38% seem not as lazy and idle. So I sleep a little more than 8 hours a night. Does that really make me lazy? No. What makes me lazy is that I spend roughly 20% of my day consuming some form or another of media. Whether it is television, movies, music or Internet content (such as Facebook). Right there I'm spending half of my day either asleep or lying around watching TV or watching my Facebook newsfeed. Again, not all bad. I know how many chicken zombies my friends have on their farms, as well as whats happening in the world. I do watch the news often. These stats are all just rough estimates based on one 5 day period of time when I kept track of my activities. It is hardly a scientific study. Which worries me all the more that it is incredibly accurate in portraying the type of person I really am. The aspect of this project that saves me from throwing the television out the window is that I spend equally as much time, percentage-wise, working as I do consuming media. Being unemployed financially at the moment, my working consists of yard stuff. I was surprised to see that I spend a nearly equal amount of time working as I do being entertained by various media. Surprised but pleased, or at least mildly complacent. The disappointing part of this whole project is that the work I am doing is largely for my own satisfaction. I like the exercise and the spending time outside. Which means that adding together my media consumption time and my working time I'm spending 40% of my day seeking to please my own interests. Tack on 38% of the day for sleep and I spend 78% of the day following after my own desire. I am a hedonist, at least for 18 hours a day. But that rings true with my thinking that we are all hedonists. I don't think we can clearly label ourselves as strictly meeting one man's philosophy or anther's, but I think there is a lot of truth behind the hedonistic approach to human motivation. Hedonism is portrayed as sensual and dirty in a lot of cases, but it isn't. If you have ever slept in rather than get up early to help someone out you were acting hedonistically. It is putting yourself above others and doing things to increase reward and limit pain or punishment. The controversial part of hedonism is when you try to see how it jives with religion. Unfortunately, I think a lot of religious activity is hedonistic in nature, but that might not necessarily be bad. It's a tough call. One recurring theme in religion is to please God. I have no complaints with this. He is pleased when we serve other people. So if we are serving other people to obtain a pat on the back from God, then we are serving other people in order to serve ourselves. Hedonism. Also, there is the desire to avoid eternal punishment that motivates people to serve. Hedonism again. Along these lines is where I think hedonism finds merit. But where it seems to fall short, at least in my understanding is that it never allows for a person to transcend this base level of motivation. Hedonism doesn't allow that a person might actually divorce themselves from any expected return and serve in a truly self-less manner. I believe that is possible. I think we are able to get over ourselves completely, even if it is only in one instance or one type of behavior. I think overcoming hedonistic, or perhaps biological, motivation is what charity is. Charity is the love of Christ, the love of God for his children. It is the motivating factor that makes life possible for us on the Earth. Charity is the motivation and the end goal for true Christians. To obtain true charity is to be like Jesus Christ. Though no one will accomplish this in mortality, because of our natural, biological imperfections and weakness, charity is still accomplishable in fragments and portions. Perhaps if I want to reduce my hedonist pursuits from 78% of the day to something a little less embarrassing I can focus on my motivations. Why do I spend so much time seeking entertainment? Motivation is an interesting subject. One that I will not discuss any further at the moment because mine has just run out in regards to typing. I will now eat some pie.