The Glorification of Busy

My iPhone screen shattered this past weekend. (I don’t want to talk about it…) I waited nearly 4 years to upgrade my old phone and fell madly in love with my new iPhone 6. We made out a couple times.

Anyway, I turned off my cracked phone earlier this week (as requested by Apple) until my scheduled appointment to fix it yesterday.

I didn’t tell anyone about turning off my phone, except the hubster, because 1) I know I’m not that popular and 2) I didn’t actually want to talk to anyone, so it worked out! Know what happens in 2 days when you don’t have a phone?

You’re quickly reminded how inconsequential your life is.

No, really. Not in a bad sense. In sort of a refreshing sense.

Sadly, I turned on my phone in the morning to see if anyone called or texted.

Just 1 text.

I kept it on throughout the morning (bad!) and I got 2 more texts.

That’s it.

The world still rotated on its axis. Stocks didn’t plummet. Justin Timberlake is still married. (sigh.)

In general, I’m a busy gal. Much like one of my favorite bloggers, I thrive on busy. As Roni says:

“Not busy for busy’s sake busy but truly busy with lots of projects, activities and things I’m trying to accomplish.”

I’m always, always juggling a few outside projects and I’ve had an extremely busy, pressure-filled couple months at just work alone. Not to mention trying to train for a half marathon, this blog, etc., etc., the list goes on and on. But so does yours, right?

My point is, we’re not all as busy as we think we are.

Turning off my phone made that perfectly clear.

I’m so beyond all the excuses of how much busier another person is than me or you or your mama.

I have a girlfriend who I swear to baby Jesus is always sick. (Not life threatening. I’m not that cold.) Every single time I talk to her, she’s sick. Sick and busy. Just so so so so so SO busy. You know what that’s like to call after a while? Sort of exhausting. I don’t want to add to her busy schedule that she makes abundantly clear to me by calling and interrupting. And that’s exactly how it comes across when I’m basically making her more busy by talking to me. This happened for years…so I stopped calling.

Ever send or return something to someone and fail to hear if they got it? Even an email. Then you wonder if they got it, so you wait the appropriate amount of time (you know, weeks) to ask if they got it, only to be blown off with the incredibly cliché and typical:

Oh sorry. Yeah. You know how busy we are. 

Yeah, I do. Guess what? We’re all busy! Busy or not, rude is rude. I’m not even looking for a thank you. I’m looking for a “Hey, got it!” But that’s too much for people who are too busy.

Let’s set aside forgetfulness for the moment. It happens to all of us and people understand because everyone has been there. Sometimes I totally forget to call or text back or tell someone, “Got your email. On it. Sorry I haven’t responded yet.”

…I was “busy” taking selfies of perfecting my top bun and FINALLY earning my chick card.

But a constant forgetfulness that’s attributed to being “so busy all the time” is just a crutch for being careless in my humble opinion.

I realize there’s a psychological undertone to all of this. People who are “always busy” probably feel they’re contributing something. There is a very primal need for you and me to know we are valued. Perhaps their value is wrapped tightly around the idea of busyness.

But at what point do you become so consumed with your own type of busy, that you forget you’re not the only one who is?

Unless you’re a diplomat stuck in very real deliberations for world peace, your busy is no more significant than mine.

Busy is such an incredibly relative term.

So let’s stop it. Let’s stop the glorification of busy.