Big Little ThingsBusy-ness is blindness
I’ve got a friend who, when I ask him how he’s doing, invariably answers this way: Dude. Soooo busyyyy. And he says it sort of breathlessly, drawing the last word out into a kind of falsetto. But when I ask him what’s got him so busy, the answer doesn’t vary much either: Oh man. All kinds of crazy shit.
Thing is, that doesn’t mean anything. If I press, it’s mostly work, family, and personal obligations—the usual stuff that fills up most everyone’s day.
This weekend I did nothing. No hanging out with friends, no work, no personal creative projects. Really, nothing. I sat on the couch. I walked from one room to the other. I looked in the fridge. I checked my email. I smoked a joint and spaced out. I did all the non-things a person does when idling at home. And until today, it kinda sucked because I generally subscribe to the commonly held idea that busy-ness means progress. Since I was doing nothing, it felt like none of the things I want to do were getting done.
But today I no longer feel like it sucked, nor do I feel like I made no progress. I say this because there is a blindness that comes with busy-ness, because focusing on one thing shuts out everything else. This weekend, in doing nothing, I found all kinds of inspiration for new cool stuff to do. I found it because I wasn’t looking for it. In fact, I wasn’t looking for anything, which is why I was able to see so much more. Turns out, doing nothing is a kick-ass way to grow creativity.
May 23rd, 2007 at 1:11 pm
This is the problem with busy, busy, busy it tends to become same old, same old. Doing “nothing” seems to open a space of possibilities where new stuff can happen.
May 23rd, 2007 at 6:51 pm
or rather replace “in doing nothing” with:
“This weekend, by smoking my joint, I found all kinds of inspiration for new cool stuff to do.”
May 23rd, 2007 at 7:23 pm
Okat: Maybe so. But I wouldn’t give the weed too much credit. It was also, as Richard says, the simple freedom from doing something (in my case, the inability to motivate to do anything) that opened up the potential for newness.
May 29th, 2007 at 11:49 am
All it would take to completely change your mind on this would be an 18-month-old in your household.
June 7th, 2007 at 7:04 am
i don’t see why an 18 month in your household would change the fact that we (especially San Franciscans) believe that busy is status. Face it, if you constantly told your family and friends that you were just chillin, didn’t have any goals and were just cruising, most of us would feel bad for you and look down on you, myself included.
this isn’t about weed, or kids…it is about thinking that not actively pursuing our next life’s goal is a waste of valuable time…and soon you’ll be dead, which in our godless society is the end. don’t take your life for granted, get out there and do it. problem is, the “it” is just a made up thing we want, and it won’t matter one bit if we got there or not once we’ve stopped breathing.
believe that it is a process, an ebb and flow. constant struggle may help us think we are more special than the next person, but the fact is, we are all bound by this flesh and by time.