“I’m busy.”
“Too much to do!”
“I just have so much on my plate right now.”
“I need more sleep.”
“Why can’t I keep up with all my stuff?”
“I’ve got so much to do this week.”
Hello, self. YOU CHOSE THIS BUSY LIFE. It’s your own darn fault you’re this busy! It’s not like God ever says, “Thou shalt fill your days full of doing stuff until you feel like your brain leaketh out of your ears.”
And because it’s my own fault, I don’t think I should complain about it (not that I should be complaining about things that aren’t my fault, but you get my drift). I think talking about it and complaining about it only makes it worse. It raises my anxiety level and once again, peace flounders in my heart.
If it’s so bad I need to be talking about it all the time, I need to cut back (and I am, but that’s a post for another day). And I need to stop announcing it to everyone I know. We are ALL busy. How often does one of my friends say, “Gee, a day has so many hours! How to fill them?”
Not-a-one.
No one needs to know how busy I am. So I’ve tried to stop saying it.
Guys, this is HARD. I am absolutely floored by the number of times I say some variation of, “I’m busy” during a regular day. And when I try and come up with an alternative (say, a friend wants to meet for coffee but I have no free nights until July), I struggle. I try and rework language to say the same thing: “My life is just overflowing with beautiful events and while I would love to have a delicious coffee, it seems that my full calendar would prohibit me from doing so until mid-July.”
Semantics. Also, adjectives.
I think more than anything, this exercise in cutting out “I’m busy” from my vocabulary is making me realize just how busy I am. But again, it’s a beast of my own making and that’s something else to deal with. One of my other action items this month is to “work toward simplicity.” I’m already trying this, and it’s helping clear out some of my daily to-do clutter a little, so I don’t feel quite so busy.
But it’s still my goal to stop saying “I’m busy.” At least it might help curb the mental stress I put on myself by saying it out loud. All the time. If you hear me say/type it, smack me. (Nicely.)
I’m with you. I’ve tried to remove “I’m busy” from my vocabulary completely — especially when used an excuse for losing touch with friends, skipping events, not keeping up with certain aspects of my life. It’s true that sometimes I must be choosy with how I’m going to spend those precious free few hours in my day, but I also believe (strongly!) that we make time for what’s important to us. And we have to make time for all the important, peaceful things!
It’s such a delicate balance between doing all the things we want to do and not going crazy!
Busy does not necessarily equal happy — or in [cultivate] terms joyful or peaceful. There are so many things that we think (we feel and are told) that we *should* be doing that somehow we’re going to lose the game (whatever the game is) if we don’t get AS MANY AS POSSIBLE done. There was the old saying “the one with the most toys at the end wins” could be replaced these day with “the one that did the most wins”.
There’s another aspect of “being busy” that it is often used as an excuse for NOT doing something. I want to read more, but I’m so busy. I want to volunteer at this or that, but I’ve got so much on my plate. We prioritize things all the time — our work, our families, our friends — we should be more honest with ourselves about what we choose to spend our time doing.
I didn’t even consider the excuse angle of this! It’s totally true — it’s much easier to say no because we’re too busy. My friend Jenny, who runs a non-profit that desperately needs volunteers, always has people turn her down because they are too busy. And sometimes she looks at them and says, “Did God ask you to do all those things?” Right in the gut, that one.
Just catching up here. Been too busy to read “Cultivate” lately! Seriously, this was a good one for me. One of O.J.’s favorite lines to say to me when I say “I’m too busy. I don’t have TIME” is “All you HAVE is time!” Gets me every time. But, he’s right. That’s all we have is time! What we choose to fill it with is up to us and it goes to what was said above about prioritizing and what’s really important to you. Gotta go now and start prioritizing for the day! Uh oh; I better go back and read the blog about giving up a little control.
That’s such a good (somewhat evil) response because it’s so true! I need to tell myself that more often.