I have been thinking lately about the word busy. Everybody is busy. I have tried to adopt a personal policy of not using the word as it feels like, ‘we are soooo busy lately’ has become everyone’s go to defense for our inability to make time to connect with friends and family.
I mean maybe you want an excuse to put off certain obligations but over-all, I think we are just over-committed. Everyone seems to be working too many hours and chasing kids to and from all their activities. When you add society pressure to try and include some sort of activity that sparks joy in us or get some much needed exercise in addition to staying on top of the laundry, grocery shopping, bills etc. I tell you, it has me counting the minutes to bedtime so I can stop trying to achieve work/life balance. Then I was thinking, a lot of what makes me fall behind on the day to day (and thereby inadvertently becoming busy) are the completely unexpected, impossibly inefficient tasks that fall into our laps out of the blue. I am talking about the unexplained extra charge on the credit card/cable/tax bill that ends up requiring 30 minutes on hold, three department transfers, three identical explanations to each new support person and the inevitability that you will have to start all over again when you are accidentally disconnected during one of those transfers. Or, the surprise visit to the garage when your ‘stupid car!’ decides to inexplicably stop working or make terrible noises or produce clouds of smoke. This unsolicited busy work can either be sorted by taking your vehicle to the shop and sitting in the waiting area for another lost hour or dropping it off for a few days and resorting to public transit (that oh so reliable mode of transportation) further adding to your ‘timely’ arrival to whatever other obligations you are now schlepping to that week. Or maybe your kid is suddenly afflicted by; stomach flu, pink eye, head lice or lost homework and there you go, anywhere from a few hours to several days lost enjoying the myriad tasks each of those delightful situations require.
My hypothesis is that these little golden nuggets of chaos are what really kibosh otherwise reasonable lives. These proverbial ‘wrenches’ are what send us off into a quagmire of un-productivity and prevent us from eating dinner at a reasonable hour (soccer and hockey practice notwithstanding), completing our paperwork and/or projects at work in a timely fashion (‘Jane’s’ late accounting report notwithstanding) and getting to the gym (personal motivation notwithstanding).
The strangest part about this phenomenon is that, statistically, you would think these random upsets would happen more rarely than they do. Incredibly, it seems that whenever I am chatting and catching up with friends, everyone seems to be singing the same tale of exasperation having dealt with several of these doozies in a single week!
I think we may have an epidemic on our hands. It may be time to write a letter to complain to someone. It’s gonna take some research to figure out who has any influence, then I will have to solicit some friends for supporting evidence, draft the grievance, send it out for edits, re-type and forward to the appropriate authorities, await follow up and disseminate instructions or advice where appropriate.
Except that I am kinda busy at the moment, I will have to add it to my ‘to-do’ list, I’ll let you know when I have time.