40-42 hour work week. Period.

Agreed - I don't watch any TV. I cancelled cable years ago - you probably are sending them a surprising wad of money every month unnecessarily.

-Rob
-visit http://www.kahr.us to get my daughterboard that helps fix WPC pinball resets or for my Pinball 2000 H+V video sync adapter kit

It helps when you own your own business and the office, and the game room are on location!

Good grief, working an insane number of hours is not a badge of honor.

If someone is working an excessive number of hours of overtime on a regular basis, that should be a sign that there should probably be another employee in there to help with the workload. Personally, I like my job, but not enough to work myself to exhaustion over it. I have other things I'd rather do in my downtime.

Pretty similar to everyone else here, it's all about priorities and balance. I'm in a very similar situation to you, 33, full time job, married, with a 7 month old. Luckily my job is great and we have flexible scheduling/compressed work weeks, but there is always a struggle to decide how I want to spend my non-family time. I'm also into playing guitar, board games, and console games in addition to pinball and arcades as hobbies, so there is always a choice you need to make on where you want to spend your free time. I watch a bit of TV, but nothing like I did even 5 or 10 years ago, and honestly most of it is YouTube game tech videos to learn more when I can. My hobbies also seem to come in waves. A month will go by where I have zero interest in playing a console game, and then a week will hit where it's all I can think about.

At the end of the day I just remember that these are games and life is life. Would I like that weak flipper to be fixed right now? Of course. Would I rather spend that time with my wife, son and friends outside on the patio - probably! I think the first step is just realizing that this is a hobby and you can put stuff down or not play in 5 tournaments a week and still enjoy it.

Think of it this way, if you had all of your time for pinball, you wouldn't have much else in life going on . I really enjoy time working on and playing games, and I don't get through as much as I'd like, and I'm not as good as I should be, and won't be playing at PAPA anytime soon, but that's a choice I've made so I can enjoy more than just pinball - but still enjoy pinball!

ah,yes,and then there are us retired hippies that have nothing more to do than to smoke one=or two-and then pinball for a hour or two,oh?don't you?SO Sorry!!!

Replace the word "fishing" with "playing pinball."

My record is 104hrs in a 7 day period, which is not a regular thing but a personal record by a long shot. I work in a field with 24hr shifts. While both unsafe and unhealthy, one could work four shifts with recovery days in between and achieve 96hrs in a one week period. This parallels an opinion I voiced in a different thread, that maybe we shouldn't be so quick to judge others decisions without understanding their situations in life. Many different backgrounds and walks of life on here. Now back on topic: its a pinball feast or famine for me. When I have the time, I binge hard, otherwise it might be a few weeks.

I have one hobby at a time, give up golf for pinballing. At least I can fix pinball machines.

There is rarely a day I don't play pinball at least a game or two which for me can be less than 5 min lol

I think some folks are thinking hourly worker. When you have a salary job, the amount of hours you are "expected" to work is all over the place. I'm in sales and I basically work as many hours as I need to "get 'er done". That could be 40 hours one week and 60 the next.

I have worked plenty of 90 hour weeks. It's not something I would want to do *every* week, however.

Probably true but it's hard to find good help these days and if there willing to throw all the overtime I want at me then I'm going to take all of it that I can take. Heck they don't even ask anymore...I just show up each and every day, there's always something for me to do in my position and it's never questioned. Get the overtime while you can.

John

It gets easier as they get older. My kids are 16 and 13 and besides travel sports (baseball, basketball, football, and softball) my nights and weekends are wide open. In other words I have about four free hours a week, up from two.

images-10 (resized).jpg

I 100% agree but these national accounting firms seem to be doing okay despite their crazy high turnover rates because of these insane hours their employees work. Also your example is a horrible comparasion. Haha

No kids yet and i work for myself that's how i have time for pinball

Simple:

Don't get married.

Don't knock up any broads.

Where do I find the time?

I gave up Sex!

Now that's funny.

Don't sleep

Know the pain. Work and time with my kiddo cuts into it but it is what it is. I have two project machines I haven't been able to dig in and fix as I've had them for a year.

Coin slots seem to work then? Wakka Wakka

I should have phrased it correctly.....my Wife gave it up!

37 - 2 kids age 2 and 4 - work full time and travel 2-3 days a week - make decent money and still have no time and very little money for pinball - kids, as wonderful as they are, absorb the majority of disposable income. What really gets me are the guys who seem to be able to drop everything at a moments notice - leave work, leave family, etc for a multi-hour or all day round trip to score a deal. Even if I have money to burn, all the good deals seem to get snapped up by guys who can literally walk out on their families or work with no repercussions and go score a deal. I am too new to the hobby (3 years or so) to have scored all the deals of yesteryear and build collections of 2k-4k "A list" titles so that's another strike against me and the rest of us new guys haha. still love the hobby, love doing the repair / restoration work, love playing with others and meeting other hobbyists - just wish it was easier to sustain without putting myself in the poor house.

That would free up a good 7 minutes a week for me! With my pinball skill that should be an extra 8 games or so. Thanks!

Wow. You get action 7 times a week?!? Lucky...

52674239 (resized).jpg

I was hoping someone would make that joke. Bravo.

Turned off free play... installed a .25 change machine. Quit my job

Saw this thread and had to take a look. I'm one of those guys putting in 70 hours a week and it's frustrating. I have 2 kids and only got into the hobby in January of this year. No I don't have enough time for it but my son and I can sneak away to my game room, err office and play a few games together. He's 11 and having a lot of fun with it. He had a sleepover last night and I told them not to play pinball all night.... unless they put up some new high scores...

I've been out of work for about 3 months, and I'm getting a LOT done with the collection. Restored my Paragon, new cab decals for WW, lots of small fixes. I'm hoping to get at least one playfield swap in while I'm still job hunting. I'm spending most of my time learning AWS right now, since Cloud seems to be table stakes for any kind of tech job these days.

Go in the garage, and one game at a time bro. if somethong is broke i dont play shit until the broken game is fixed, with this principle everything in your collection will work or youll have just one game down and one project which is stress free...

I have a 3 year old daughter, and we just added twins in February. My project time has all but vanished. I loved having project pins before, now I'm down to one that has been waiting on re-population and board work for the last year.

In my area we have a really great league that's flexible. It's mostly made up of people that have families and can only infrequently make events. No one gives anyone a hard time for missing an event because we just play for a modest amount of cash, and there are no month-to-month points. Show up when you can and have a great time! If my schedule aligns I can get out to the rare event to catch up with my pinball friends. If not, maybe next month.

I make sure to plan well-ahead for 2 events every year - MGC and Chicago Expo. My wife is really supportive about me making those events. Usually she'll recruit a sister or parent to stay with her for the weekend to help with the kids.

One of the reasons I got into pinball was because video games took up too much time in a sitting. Playing Fallout for 15 minutes isn't really all that easy or rewarding.. flipping a switch on a pinball machine and squeezing in a game is a relatively easy thing to do.

Get a job that requires travel and travel near pinball shows having the COmpaNy pay your travel and related expenses. I can usually get hotels & meals comped as well. If you need more time than you have vacation, call in sick.

This thread made me think about one of my favorite Dilbert strips

image (resized).png