Practice time: how much sitting in a room on your own?...

I was having this discussion with my guitar teacher about whether I should continue with the classical guitar orchestra or not.  I've been playing in it a couple of years now, and I really enjoy playing with other amateur guitarists, and it's a blast rehearsing with a professional conductor. And I realize I'm extraordinarily fortunate to live in a place where such a thing as an amateur guitar orchestra exists.  However it takes a lot of time - make that a huge amount of time - especially right before a performance.  And to my mind that time could be more productively spent on repertoire or technique, or (heaven forbid) just playing for fun!  But as my guitar teacher said - how many people are happy spending hours a day sitting in a room practicing? Wouldn't I miss the friendships and social aspect?  Well yes.   But currently I'm missing having time to just noodle around, I'm missing practicing my repertoire pieces, and since I requested (and got) more emphasis on developing technique from my teacher, I don't have any fun new pieces to learn.  In fact most of my practice involves stuff I need to do rather than stuff I really want to do (like learn "Arabian Dance" or "Maria Luisa)."

This week for instance, I've been practicing sight reading (still working through the Duncan "Guitar at Sight" book), playing through orchestra parts with a metronome trying to make them consistent, and working on string damping and making shifts without looking at the fretboard.  To my mind none of that counts as "fun."  As a result there have been a few times when I've found myself wanting to read a book (or catch up on laundry) rather than play guitar.  So I thought I'd compile a list of goals/wants, what is needed to accomplish them, and compare it with what I'm actually doing.

Wants:
1. Make music for myself.  (Pieces I enjoy of course!)
.........Play and add to repertoire.

Short/Medium term goals
2.Play for others in a casual setting, without succumbing to an attack of nerves  -
.........Needed - lots of practice playing in public/under stress.  More solid technique (see 4).

3.Sight read simple pieces instead of having to learn them
.........Work on sight reading every day

Long term goals
4. Play better (several grades better)
.........Needed - technical work and pieces from guitar teacher

 The motivation for me playing the guitar really comes from #1 - I really love to make music, I love to progress, and I hope eventually to be able to share or use the music in some way.  Everything else stems from that.   But if I look at my practice time, maybe half of it is on orchestra material, a quarter on warm up exercises, distractions and the odd technical thing I feel like working on, and a quarter on the pieces/goals my guitar teacher gives me. So it's apparent where the problem is - I've missing out completely on things that feed my soul and spending less time than I need to on my goals. Something needs to change.   And the elephant in the practice schedule is most definitely the orchestra stuff.  So if I didn't have that, maybe I could spend a quarter time on new fun pieces, half on technical work/pieces and the other quarter a mix of warm up /playing existing repertoire/distractions.  That's about half hard work and half pure pleasure.

Which brings me back to the question my guitar teacher asked - who is happy spending hours in a room on their own playing and practicing?
Answer:  I think I am.