The marginal cost of leisure

Leisure comes at a cost.

I have long intuited this cost; staring at the wall while listening to The Roots has occasionally felt unreasonably idle, even consumptive.

But a rare showing at my macro-econ class (I had to do a midterm, see) yielded a framework by which I can quantify this cost of leisure. Ahem. Let us consider a thought experiment.

I am a household at equilibrium between consumption and leisure, which is to say that the current amount of labor I exert fuels precisely the amount of spending that I consider optimum at my current wage. Presumably there are many such consumption/leisure pairs that make sense for me for a range of wages. Then the marginal cost of leisure is the amount by which I am willing to reduce my wage (approximated by consumption) for a unit of leisure. While I cannot begin to approximate the entire marginal cost function ...

... bear with me, please, I am boring even myself ...

... I can consider what I would give up for one hour of leisure, at my current equilibrium. This should be easy to imagine. It's 5PM. I have work to do, and my boss is still in the office. I should really stay till 6, because face time, goddammit, that is what matters in life. But I can deduct some amount from my paycheck for a guilt-free ticket out of the office. So: ten bucks? Twenty?

What am I doing with this hour? I am staring at the wall, listening to The Roots. Sometimes I am listening, without shame, to the Innocence Mission. Often I am staring not at the wall but the television. While surfing the Internet. Googling casual acquaintances. Thinking about lunch. Thinking about dinner. Seeing casual acquaintances in person. Talking, even. Walking to the river. Flipping through old pictures. Remembering things, trying to forget others. Stuck in the subway. Waiting for the train. Avoiding eye contact with the bright-eyed Athena wearing the garbage bag. Cleaning, if only because I do not want to study for the econ midterm. Waiting for emails, texts, hellos, a light brush of elbows, anything, goddammit. Waiting for nothing. Happy about something or another, maybe at another memory. Sad about nothing. Beating the crap out of pads, on prompt. Jab. Overhand. Hook, hook, uppercut, left knee, right roundhouse. Three sets of squat thrusts, clapping pushups until the bell rings. Sweating on the mat. Thinking donuts in my head. Tasting donuts in my mouth. Seeking cheap noodle soups in dingy Chinatown restaurants at nine P.M. Feeling fortunate for possessing a remarkable capacity for melancholy without depression. For being the sort of person whose idea of an evening well spent revolves around half-baked interpretations of modern economic theory, going on and on about nothing. Twenty bucks, forty bucks. Three thousand bucks. Keep the goddamn paycheck. No, give it to me. Give it to me, and I will turn labor into leisure. I am the ideal household, a labor market of one and consumer extraordinnaire, yes, yes, yes.