Being Busy

It's been a while since I've had a chance to write here.

It's been busy, like always, and in the past few weeks there have been articles giving that word, "busy," quite a bad rap. It started with a new book that I really want to read, "Overwhelmed: Work, Love and Play When No One Has Time." I definitely have my moments of overwhelm. There are some unnecessarily difficult circumstances that lead to situations like the one I described in this post, "Perfect Storm." But the articles I found myself disagreeing with are the ones that claim we use busy as a status symbol.

I *like* being busy. Two months into my freshman year of college, a friend I'd just barely gotten to know gave me the book "Meditations for Women Who Do Too Much" for my birthday. She'd clearly picked up on something that I don't think I'd really noticed about myself yet. But I remember thinking to myself that I just wanted to experience as much as I could, even if that meant it looked like "too much" to someone else. Nothing has changed since then.

I'm not trying to make you keep up with me, and I'm not judging you for not doing as much as me. Whenever I look at my life, the things that give me the most pleasure are the ones that keep me the busiest: things like LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER, regularly going to synagogue with my family, making dinner plans with friends, writing on this blog. Deciding to be less busy wouldn't take out the less fun aspects of life, like sweeping the floor and dealing with car repairs.

So don't worry that I'm too busy. I could spend more time at home, doing less, but it wouldn't translate into a less busy life, just a less full one.