2012 NHL Lockout: How are you passing your time?

So, how about this lockout?

There aren't many hockey fans out there happy about what the NHL is doing right now. It's aggravating feeling so powerless, and the fact that this lockout actually doesn't make rational sense now that both sides have lost more than they stand to gain makes it even more frustrating.

But sometimes, when the hockey gods close a door, they open a few windows.

Without NHL hockey to watch, all of us have a lot more time on our hands. We can spend time with our families, re-discover old loves, invest in new habits, or begrudgingly watch re-runs of 2 Broke Girls (worst show ever, BTW). So how are you passing your time without the NHL?

I'm asking because last week, CBC producer Marcy Cuttler got in touch with a number of Canadian hockey blogs to pose the question. Cuttler is in the preliminary stages of plotting out a documentary feature on hockey fans without hockey, and she's looking for some interesting stories from us. A message from her is below.

I am a television producer/director with CBC Television. I work on the program "Doc Zone".

While we are keeping our fingers crossed that the NHL season can be saved, we are, nevertheless, bracing for the possibility of a winter without hockey. Should that happen, we are exploring a documentary idea. Our focus would not be on the labour dispute, the economics or any of the negotiations at all.

Instead we want to take a look at how Canadians are coping without the national game. It would speak to our psyche, our emotional connection to hockey, and it would be a wry, affectionate perspective

So..we want to know what people are doing without their NHL fix. Have you taken up a new hobby? Kick start an old hobby? If you're part of a family of hockey fans, what are all of you doing now? If you're in business, how are you meeting the challenge? If you use the hockey season to entertain clients, what are the alternatives?

We're open to all ideas. We're not trying to make light of the labour dispute. Rather through these stories we hope to show that even if hockey is gone, it is not forgotten.

So, how are you passing the time?

I'll kick things off with my story. I've barely noticed the lockout so far, because I've been kept fairly busy with a new house--my wife and I bought it in October and had been undertaking some pretty hefty renovations until we moved in last week. Now that we're getting settled in and the holidays have started, there's so much else going on that the lockout remains secondary.

Once the new year begins, though, I may start to notice the lack of NHL hockey a little more acutely (assuming, of course, no resolution is made before then). Hopefully I'll be able to use the time I'd otherwise have spent watching and writing about hockey to resume other writing projects. There's that book I've been working on for years and should probably (digitally) dust off. And I've started posting on my bus blog once again, re-charged by the city's recent LRT announcement.

But enough about me. I'm a lot more interested in hearing all of your stories about what the lockout's meant for you. The floor is yours...