SUPER Busy
Have you ever spent an entire weekend alone vacillating between Netflix and Hulu and basic cable in your pajamas with peanut butter from the jar and reheated ravioli and felt like a total failure? I have. I open 5 junk mail listicles a day outlining why the collective “we” shouldn’t feel so guilty about the busy lives we lead. I’m preached at from every angle about making time for the boyfriend I don’t have and Konmari-ing the space I don’t have and balancing work with the outside life I’ve yet to cultivate. Sometimes I’m so painfully Not Busy that I wonder if the whole planet is hanging out without me in some sort of sick Mean Girls conspiracy to take me down and make sweat pants the-only-thing-that-fits-right-now. Am I wasting time or practicing self-care or just depressed?
In the past 3 years I’ve especially felt the sting of loneliness in a sea of humans who seem to have it figured out. The artful display of fashion consumption and of perfectly candid photos and the brunches and day trips and love affairs and yoga retreats seem to come so easily to everyone else, and yet often I find myself gravitating home with my dog and my bed and couch and books. Maybe it takes practice or a certain set of genomes to be capable of feeling so Blissfully Otherwise Engaged, or maybe we’re all just lying to each other and ourselves because Busy has become it’s own badge of honor that we’re desperate to acquire at any cost. In the desperation we’ve lost sight of the “why” in our quest to perpetually propel ourselves in motion.
But maybe being alone and enduring the mundane without a pretty boy in your bed or a trip to Palm Springs on the horizon to distract from the monotony only makes you more in tune. In tune with how often your toilet bowl should be cleaned or the best microwaveable frozen entrees for one from Trader Joe’s, but also with your demons and your joys, with your heartbeat and the tangle of complicated truths it echoes. Only in the quiet can we hear what drives us. Only now in the boredom and the lonely can we come to terms with what we need and who we will become. The evolution happens so subtly and painstakingly maybe we hardly even notice. Maybe we cry every night at the slowness of our becoming, but inside a change is always churning and leaning forward. Life doesn’t always happen loudest in the loudest times when you’re sweaty and exhilarated and screaming lyrics to a Robyn song with a bourbon ginger in-hand. Instead, it often occurs in the in-between when we’re too busy not being busy with Bravo On-Demand to notice.
Tonight I anxiously fidget as I flip through channels and know that for now, tomorrow is something else; a happily un-busy, boring, opportunity to complain and grow and just fucking BE.