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Needless Busy

When anyone asks me how I have been or how is work, I really make an effort to provide a thoughtful reply and very rarely claim to be busy never mind crazy busy. I notice the confusion and bewilderment that my response is usually met with. Something must be wrong if I am not making claims to being busy - what exactly am I then doing to justify my existence. It is true as this author points out, that most people do claim they are crazy busy and with a sense of pride and accomplishment. I am always intrigued by those that don't - they are fun to talk to, there is something to learn from how they are living their lives.  

Over the holidays, I met B who is unabashed about doing what he needs to to collect his paycheck and focus his time on learning things he is curious about - which is a wide range of items. So the learning time while it takes up most of his mental capacity is not "busy" time. B can break off any moment to run errands, do things with his family or just sit back and relax. He was happy to claim he is not particularly busy and likes it this way, has no intention of working a job that busies him out. When he says this over dinner, not everyone in the room is aligned with his thought process but I could tell many envy what B has. We could all do with less useless busy just to prove that our lives are consequential. 

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