  Yes,  you're totally right and I agree with almost everything you said.  Obviously as long as anyone is alive,  they are " living life.  Life is experience.
 And experience is found in every waking moment.  I think what I should have said was this:  for me,  personally,  what I find most fulfilling to my life are such activities as painting and writing ( etc.
 and that I do not find activities like watching TV and playing board games as fulfilling ( to what ideas I have in my head of a meaningful life ( whatever that means in the midst of all this absurdity!  and enjoyment/ pleasure I get from the act of thinking about stuff,  and as satisfying my ground-
projects that I've set myself for life ( like becoming a writer,  wanting to understand my reality more ( i. e.  philosophize)
 and other certain,  specific activities that my particular being finds distinctly enjoyable ( i. e.  fulfilling)  I was wrong to generalize my personal feelings about my personal life to be applied to life in general.
 Not everybody ( for example)  would find philosophy fulfilling ( in fact most don't)  so I shouldn't be ascribing my own value system to people in general when the values I place on these activities are simply my own.  I don't think everyone should do philosophy (
or the same things in general)  because if everyone pursued the same activities,  that would just make for a very boring society.  Like you said on the phone last night,  life is found in the variety of experience,  not just the experience of certain variety.
 Now for a few more directed responses to explore some more specific issues:  1.  " Your distinction]  puts these activities into two completely separate and different ( opposing)
 categories"  You're right,  and I believe I was being overly dramatic in my distinction between " living life"  activities and " waiting to die"
 activities.  But I do think there exists a distinction between what- I- find- fulfilling activities and what- I-
do- not- find- fulfilling activities.  This is purely subjective and personal on my part and thus I do not believe it can ( or should be)
 generalized to everybody ( we're each our own selves with different what- I- find- fulfilling interests)  What I would like to point out,
 though,  is that given this subjectivity,  I then would believe that my what- I- find- fulfilling activities are (
to me)  " living life"  activities,  and vice versa.  When I am participating in what-
I- do- not- find- fulfilling activities,  I sometimes start to feel like I'm just "
waiting to die.  I can hear you saying now that all activities are valuable for the experiences they provide us in life.  Playing board games allows for social interactions ( beyond the board game proper)  and watching TV is sometimes desirable beyond ground- projects like writing etc.
 You're right that if I spent all my time " just writing"  I would feel equally unfulfilled ( and in fact my writing would become incredibly boring due to my lack of anecdotal experience upon which I could draw for material)  There needs to be a balance .  Variety is important.
 Sometimes I will indeed ( need to)  watch television and vedge out,  and do other such activities which do not necessarily directly contribute to my ground- projects/ fulfilling-
experiences.  The enjoyment I find in those other experiences is relative to the other experiences I have ( not that the other one's are " lesser"  or something,  but just different kinds/
ways of living life that contrast and define all the other kinds/ ways)  All I'm saying is that each of us has certain activities we find more fulfilling than others and that when faced with these " others"  we may not necessarily always enjoy them ( or find them fulfilling)
 even though they can be experiences and can be living life and can be good.  They may not always feel good or be what we want to be doing.  Why should we force ourselves to do something we don't enjoy just because we think that all experiences are good?  I think all experiences have a positive value to them,  but I don't believe that all experiences have an equal amount of that value ( but I believe that the distribution of value is something that I've set for myself,
 personally.  others may have different distributions which may put watching TV at a higher priority than wasting time typing nonsense into a computer ;  So when one of my experiences " uses up"  its value for me ( whatever "
using up"  means and in whatever way I am able to measure value:  I think this is something subconscious ( i. e.  I "
just feel it"  or " just know"  rather than having a conscious status report of my value distributions and their varying levels of satisfaction)  I may not necessarily want to ( or enjoy)
 continuing that experience.  In such a circumstance I may even feel like I'm not enjoying ( or " living"  my life.  Let me qualify this feeling a little more so it's not as severe as I'm probably sounding.
 In all experiences,  I believe there is a wide range of combined values being had at any one time.  So,  for instance,  when I'm watching TV,  I may loose interest in the TV proper but still be enjoying the conversations I'm having with my friends,
 hugging me girl friend ( that's you ;  eating some food,  or just relaxing my brain.  What I mean is that " watching TV"
 is not just watching TV,  but involves a bunch of other activities which may have value for me as well.  But on some rare occasions,  I may get tired of all the associated activities and want to pursue some other satisfying/ fulfilling activity.  And my saying out loud "
I've had enough watching TV for now"  may in fact mean that I've had enough with watching TV and its associated activities.  I don't think there's anything wrong with this though.  I'm not trying to devalue any particular activity in particular,  only that I'd like to express that particular activities for particular people can be particularly more or less valuable.  2.
 " if you're walking in the forest and you're heading along a cleared path,  isn't your walk already pre- determined by somebody else and the trees and scenery that you see around you already chosen by the people who created the path interacting with friends and learning and growing in a different way?  You're so right!  Great analogy and comparison to my examples.
 Yeah I guess everything we do can be more or less related to what somebody else has already done ( i. e.  designed for other people to experience)  I mean even looking at a piece of artwork is experiencing a " designed"
 life.  What I was most concerned with was the individual design of life ( the individual's free choices)  I can see now that we can also choose to design a designed life for ourselves.  Sometimes I may want to experience looking at a painting that was designed by another person's free choices and as such live a " second-
order"  experience.  The thing is that because I choose to have that experience,  I take ownership of it and it becomes a " first- order"
 experience while I'm having it.  I'm the only me that has ever existed and could possibly be here now looking at this painting at this time of day from this angle and having the sorts of thoughts that I'm having about it.  That's my experience and my life,  and I've chosen to live it that way.  Right on!  Similarly I could choose to watch TV or play cards or surf the internet and because I will have chosen to do those more constrained activities they are still just as "
free"  as any other activity.  3.  " The value is found not in the game itself,  but in the social interaction that the game allows for.
 . and other things beyond even the social interaction ( social interaction on its own isn't the only reason we enjoy such activities;  although it may be an aspect of the activity which you in particular find to be of greater value)  There might be other things like the element of chance and mystery in a card game,  the rush of adrenaline of betting on uncertainty,
 the motivation to win,  the interaction with friends,  the breaking- of- the- ice that the game provides for opening up conversations between people,
 the mental occupation/ entertainment it provides,  etc.  It's all these things together which relatedly constitute whatever value the activity has.  Some of these things are important to different people,  and some of them aren't.
 I think that's also the variety of life ;  4.  " Basically what i am trying to say in a convoluted kind of way is that everyone differs in their interpretation of what is 'fulfilling'.  What kinds of activities they find meaningful enough to pursue.  Yes.
 Everybody is different.  You're right and I should not have tried to project my own values on the world.  that activity just doesn't make sense.  5.  " what determines the value of an activity is totally subjective and relative to the person experiencing the activity,
 and i certainly do not believe in an absolute category of 'more fulfilling or meaningful' ( ie.  'living life')  vs.  'less fulfilling or meaningless' ( ie.
 waiting to die)  I agree there is no absolute category of " more fulfilling or meaningful"  but I do believe that the subjective individual will have in them something " more fulfilling or meaningful"  for themselves (
whatever that is)  This subjective range of value will naturally not map onto everyone else's values in the world.  An interesting question to ask is if given this range of differing values,  is there some sort of normative correlation?  I don't know,  but it would be interesting if there were consistently some values valued more than others.
 I mean,  ultimately value assignment is meaningless in an absurd reality where anything goes.  Whatever values that exist only exist because of the human minds that put them there.  A rock doesn't care if it's placed on a pillow or smashed into a billion pieces.  But a human being might.  And because we're each of us human beings,
 maybe we do share a certain ranged similarity in our value- judgments.  Most of us agree that killing is a bad thing ( but not all of us)  A lot of people think that Gay marriage is ok,  but some don't.
 Some people are conservative and some liberal.  One way of thinking is not necessarily " more right"  than the other,  but there are groups of people who think similarly ( that is,
 they have similar value assignments to their activities in reality)  All I'm saying is that given a vast possibility of differences of subjective worth,  it's interesting to note how many of us actually share similar values.  This is a total tangent to the main issue.  just having a thinklet ( brain-
fart)  6.  " 'real being' is found in EVERYTHING an individual does,  from watching television,  to walking through the woods,
 to playing a board game,  to painting a picture and beyond.  if you are limiting yourself,  isn't that when you aren't really living?  Well,  I agree that life (
real being)  is indeed found in everything that is experienced in life.  But I'm not so sure if " limiting"  experiences is necessarily a bad thing either.  I mean if a certain activity I choose to pursue is one that I place higher value upon,
 then " limiting"  myself by experiencing this activity more than a list of other diverse ( but,  to me,  less valuable/
fulfilling)  activities I don't think is necessarily " hurting"  me.  I agree that I may be missing out on something valuable that I cannot think of.  But I don't agree that I am necessarily missing out.
 The way I think we should proceed is to acknowledge that in most circumstances there are a great number of value floating around that we cannot be conscious of ( we are just finite beings anyway,  not gods)  Given this,  how can we make the judgment that some activity is not valuable to us?  We simply don't know.
 But we also do know that certain activities are valuable to us,  and we also shouldn't sluff those activities off in favour of possibly valuable activities.  It's all about the balance I think.  Give opportunity to the possible,  but balance it with the absolute.  Only in the possible (
unknown)  can we possibly find newer ( better?  value,  and in the absolute we will only find what we already know ( that which we will eventually get bored of and find less and less valuable,
 but for the meantime a certainty of value)  So the question is:  are you a radical liberal experimenter?  or a safe conservative?  Nobody is one absolutely,  but we are all somewhere inbetween these two absolutes (
at least that's what I think so far)  Ok,  that's enough for now.  Phew!
