Look at me, three posts in one week?! Who do I think I am??
I just came across this post by Megan Francis about people who go around citing their laundry list of daily activities in an effort to sound busy/useful/productive but actually come across as self-absorbed and whiny. Because everyone is busy, why waste time one-upping each other over who is the busiest, right?
In reading this post, I realized I have had busy-itis in a bad way this fall. People who innocently ask me, "how's it going?" are just making chit-chat, but for some reason I find myself listing off all the craziness of our family schedule when a simple, "Fine, thanks, how are you?" would have sufficed.
I think part of the reason I keep doing this is because I cannot possibly hold all of the Google Calendar information for our family in our head for more than one day at a time, and my compulsion to recite the day's activities to anyone who will listen is really just an effort to try to keep track of everything I am supposed to be doing. You know, the way someone might repeat a phone number several times outloud in order to try to memorize it.... What, not everyone does that? Must just be me.
Anecdote to illustrate my point...Two days ago, Dave suggested we should all go to an upcoming hockey game on the weekend. I said sure. I didn't actually enter it on the calendar, he did, therefore it didn't enter my consciousness and wouldn't until Saturday morning when I scanned the calendar for the weekend of nuttiness. In the meantime, I got called to work at my second job because the Whitecaps are still in the playoffs. I panicked and made the fatal mistake of agreeing to take a shift without first consulting the calendar. Really, by now I should know better. Of course they conflict.
And of course, I realized the problem this evening when Dave, completely out of the blue, asked if we were still good to go to the game on the weekend. When I grimaced and said that I had mistakenly agreed to take a shift, the look on his face was of utter disappointment and irritation with having been saddled with such a space cadet.
Anyway, clearly I actually AM too busy...I can hardly keep things straight anymore. This has become my whole life and it's way out of whack. Time to start moving toward a lifestyle where I can honestly answer, "Fine," when someone asks how things are going.
I do the busy-itis thing too, but only to people who I think can either a) commiserate or b) help make my load lighter in some way. I too have stopped doing the laundry list to a lot of people. I usually say "nuts as usual, but things are good!"
ReplyDeleteThere's a difference between reciting your to-do list to make other people feel like slackers and reciting your to-do list because if you say it out loud you'll remember it. A real friend will know the difference!
ReplyDeleteAnd if you can't count on your real, virtual friends, who can you count on?
This time of year is crazy busy for everyone I know, whether they are at home, at work, at school. It's strange. Hope you get to "fine" soon!