The Problem with Busy

I like having work to do.

Time goes faster and as I’ve started back at work this past year, I’ve enjoyed the way that I get excited about the things that used to excite me professionally.  I thrive on days that pass quickly because it seems I jump from one thing to the next. I feel like I get things accomplished that way.

I feel useful.

We’ve established I was never very good at being a stay-at-home-mom.  I feel like all I ever really excelled at was finding an excuse to leave the house and go shopping, or waste time on the Internet.  It’s just not me.

But lately, I’ve let ‘useful‘ become ‘busy‘.

And there’s a problem with ‘busy’

Busy is when you run around all day but never feel accomplished.

Busy is when you keep adding to the list of things you’ll do ‘when you have a minute’.

But you know deep down that minute is never going to come..

Busy isn’t useful, it’s tired.  

This morning I had a day off and as I checked over the list in my head of things I needed to get done, I realized I still hadn’t called my son’s caseworker back, even though she called late last week.

I realized now I was the mom who was so busy being a caseworker I wasn’t allowing a caseworker to help me be a mom.

When does that line get crossed?  That line between productive and frantic?  Is it that first day you can’t return the phone call?  Or is it the week later when it’s still on your to-do list?  When does busy become negligent and useful start to apply to fewer and fewer situations?

I am starting to think it’s around the time you house looks like Beirut and your children are taking to school the Box Lunch you husband didn’t have time to eat at work.

It could be when you don’t have time to deal with the mat in your dog’s hair from the thistles in the backyard so instead of brushing his tail or pulling the thistles, you just cut the entire end of fur off his tail so it can’t get caught again.

Today, it became when someone said ‘you know, your husband is gone way more than the other army guys I know’ and I snapped ‘I KNOW THAT. HE’S STILL GOING TO BE GONE MOST OF THIS FALL.  I’M SO SORRY THAT’S INCONVENIENT FOR YOU.’

Responding like that is a good sign that useful has become bitchy busy.

I work 2 job, I take university classes part time and I parent 3 kids.  That sounds impressive, right?

But it’s definitely not impressive if I halfheartedly stumble through 2 jobs, half-ass part time classes and forget to parent 3 kids.

We’re never ‘too useful’ for the things that are important to us, but we are often ‘too busy.’

Because busy is something we impose on ourselves and wear like a badge of honour.  Better to look busy than look bored, right?

Sometimes, to be useful for the things that matter most, you need to stop being busy doing other things.  Even if you enjoy those other things, trying to be useful in every situation makes you useless in every situation.

The other week I was ‘busy’ at work when I received a call.  As soon as I answered, a woman on the other line said ‘I’m going to kill myself.’

All of a sudden, I wasn’t too busy anymore.

 Today I opened my blog messages and right there in my inbox was a message from another beautiful Military Spouse who I’ve never met, that read ‘I think I’m done.  You’re my last ditch hope that maybe there’s a way I can get help before I give up.’

‘Busy’ can wait in those moments, and if busy can wait, then maybe busy isn’t as necessary as I thought.

Today I sat and had a coffee and stared long and hard at my schedule.  I reminded myself what I’m passionate about.  I reminded myself that which I feel called to do.  I reminded myself I am a wife and I am a mom to 3 kids, one of whom especially doesn’t need another overextended caseworker, he needs a mom.  They all do. 

I made some big changes and some of them sucked, but all of them were needed.

I don’t know how far back I need to travel to find that line that brings me back to useful, but I’m headed that way.

For now, it might be found in taking the time to clean a bathroom and call that caseworker back with my mom hat on.

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