Recreation

Ways to Spend Your Recreation Time

Recreational activities are the spice to life. We work in order to play. Relaxation is the real purpose of recreation. We drive ourselves so incredibly hard during the workday that we need escapes... sometimes just short breaks in our general responsibilities... like an intense football game.

Other times we need a bit more time to repair the damage our jobs do to our personal lives, like... a two week vacation in the Bahamas or maybe a week in Vermont. International travel has given us the option of Italy this week and Mexico next week. Recreation and travel are only limited by your imagination.

Age, race, religion, social status and personal finances certainly play a part in the recreational activities we involve ourselves in. Seniors are getting together as a group to afford better vacationing. They often take bus rides to the nearest gambling locales or venture off to Mexico to enjoy beachfront fantasies and lots of Margaritas!

Singles are another group targeted for group recreation activities. Since meeting your kind, handsome, knight in shining armor or your bodacious blonde bombshell fantasy girl is so difficult, singles find themselves commiserating together- and then often find their soul mates quite accidentally.

Bars, public groups, religious groups even grocery stores are providing recreational activities like skydiving, religious retreats, clubs/support meetings and yes, even shopping for singles, to draw in groups that have money to spend and time to do it (not having kids frees up more than your time!).

Families, single parents and even kids aren't left out of the mix. Just look in your local newspaper or jump online and you will find plenty in your area designed for just your family situation, often including childcare when necessary.

And let's not leave out the kids! Brownies, Boy Scouts, Big Brother/Big Sister programs, Junior Achievement, ROTC, Girl Scouts, 4-H and summer camps are available to most kids.

Parks, lakes, and rivers are especially inviting to those in search of the quite, pristine peace that they find so hard to achieve during the work week. Swimming, boating, fishing, even rock climbing, spelunking and hiking are attractions that are simply irresistible to the outdoor enthusiast.

Speaking of spelunking (that's cave exploring, for those of you not familiar with this dangerous, adrenaline rush), many people find they need an extreme adrenaline rush to feel relaxed. Boxed behind a desk day in and day out causes them more anxiety than jumping out of a plane! For adrenaline junkies, sky diving, hang gliding, para-sailing, bungie jumping and cliff diving are regular parts of a relaxing weekend.

Bottom line, it's all about fun. Some of us think cooking is fun, others find it terribly boring and a chore we would rather pass off to anyone else willing to do it. The two week vacation most of us get is what we live and die for- two weeks at the beach or in the mountains or even at the bottom of the sea is sheer pleasure. Personally, I am looking forward to spending a couple weeks in outer space!