Night Thoughts

May, 2007

Stung by the Busy Bee

Add to my “Things I Don’t Care About Now That I’m 40” list”: busyness

I’ve been thinking about the concept of busyness lately. For some people, their busyness rate justifies their existence. This seems to be especially true in the Christian ministry world. The idea of breathlessly telling someone, “I’m SOOOO busy!” has a sort of affirming appeal for certain folks, an appeal I don’t understand. It’s as if saying, “I’m all caught up and taking a break” might cause their teeth to fall out and their eyes to roll back in their heads. Or would that make them feel less important? Perhaps it’s that whole admonishment about idleness in the Bible? I don’t know!

My theory has always been people who are constantly overly busy are that way for one of two reasons: their lives are out of control, or they are purposely staying busy to avoid something else. The answer for those whose lives are out of control is simple: they just don’t use their time wisely. You’ve seen the guy who’s at his desk when you leave at 5? It’s not so much that he is trying to look great to the boss by working overtime -- it’s that he spent too much time surfing the ’Net that afternoon or talking to someone in the break room. At least that’s been my observation after many years in various versions of The Office.

It’s the ones who do it on purpose because they are trying to avoid something or build themselves up that concern me. I run into this a lot as a freelancer trying to maintain a career and a personal life. I was emailing with one Christian writer friend and mentioned something about my upcoming weekend. She said, “Weekend? What’s that?” Now, come on. I will admit I do often work seven days a week but they normally aren’t seven 12-hour days. Because I have flexibility, I might slip out to the grocery store in the middle of the day or take an afternoon to visit a friend, which means I then have to make up the work on another day. But to pretend that I am SO, SO busy that I don’t know what a weekend is anymore is silly.

We all go through seasons of busyness. But wearing it like a badge is a problem. Now that I’m 40, I am swearing off constant busyness as a positive. It is now only a negative, and I refuse to let others influence me to think otherwise.

And now, I must get back to editing. Yes, on Saturday night. OK, so maybe I will ease into the new anti-busyness thing.


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