Take it easy

A friend of ours is vacationing for several weeks on an island this summer. Every few days, she emails me to update me on her trip. And she always begins with a description of how many hours she has spent working each day since the last update.

Understand, this isn’t “voluntourism.” Working isn’t an inherent part of the vacation scheme. She’s a freelance writer, like me, and could theoretically go away for a few weeks without sitting down at the desk at all. But it’s very important to her to impress upon me that that’s not the case. So she tells me how many hours she worked – and then she goes on to cover the various water sports and cultural excursions that the vacation has encompassed so far.

This has compelled me to contemplate why she feels the need to report on her work schedule. In his essay “The Busy Trap” in the New York Times last month, Tim Kreider implies that being busy has become a badge of honor, that we all have plenty of acquaintances –like the one I’m describing – who seem to believe that if they don’t remind us again and again of how busy they are, we might think that they’re, I don’t know, on vacation. Slacking, even.

I try hard to avoid this inclination in myself and not to talk about how much work I have in the abstract. I’m happy to tell anyone who is interested about specific assignments currently under way, either because they’re interesting or because they are particularly challenging, but either way, the discussion is about the specific assignment, not the mere fact that I have work to do.

So instead of referring to myself and my family as being busy, I now think of it as having a full day when all the activities are of our choosing -- whether that means recreational activities we specifically want to do or work we agreed to take on because it’s more desirable than other possible ways of making a living, even if we might rather not be working at all. I think of “busy” as meaning the sense of a treadmill: items on the schedule that are onerous, self-perpetuating and generally unfulfilling. Having a full day, on the other hand, means a lot of generally appealing options to pursue.

Thinking about this has underscored for me how much I admire those people who don't talk about being busy, and how wary I sometimes am of those who do. Several years ago, when I worked for a large international company, I was called to serve on an ad hoc committee with our CEO. “The first available meeting time she has is in six months,” the CEO’s assistant told the rest of us as we tried to set up a meeting. This gave me an uneasy feeling. Really? The CEO was busy for six months? So who was steering the ship?

Conversely, it reminds me of the first time I met the obstetrician who later delivered both my children. On my very first appointment with him, he did a physical exam and then told me to dress and meet him in his office. When I walked into his office five minutes later, he was reading the sports section of the daily paper. I loved the fact that he was so open about not being overscheduled that he was sitting there reading the paper. It assured me that he would have time for me – which as a new patient was just what I needed to know.

I began this summer with a commitment to ease up. It’s not that I actually planned to work less – as a freelancer, I need all the work I can get right now – I just didn’t want to think quite so much about work. I wanted to think about summertime.

Now, summer is about halfway over. If nothing else, I’ve thought a lot about the extent to which “busy” is a state of mind. I have a lot to do. But I’m not willing to use the “b” word because I’m happy to be doing all of it. Busy? Not really. Just happily occupied.

Keeping busy but feeling leisurely

Last week I wrote about wanting this summer to feel more like summers used to when I was in school. Rather than working daily and trying to fit in all the same things I try to fit in the rest of the year, I wanted somehow to have a real summer break – even while filing articles on deadline and maintaining the necessary workload that guarantees a paycheck.

Taking a moment to look back a week after making that resolution, I have to say it really seems to be working. At least in part. Not because I’ve been doing so much less in any particular area of my life but just because I’ve been thinking about work less and thinking about fun more. In the past week, we’ve taken part in our town’s Old Home Day celebration, attended the annual Crawfish Boil hosted by friends of ours, gone to a minor league baseball game, attended a niece’s graduation party, watched two of Tim’s baseball games, and spent 48 hours in Portland over the July 4th holiday. That’s way more fun than I fit into an ordinary work week, and I don’t feel one bit remiss in having done all of that.

I’ve also managed to keep up with work assignments, though in truth I have a little bit less work this summer than is typical.

And so far I’ve even kept the house up reasonably well and maintained a steady supply of groceries and homemade meals for my family.

So it actually doesn’t really feel like I’m kicking back or doing any less; it just feels like my attention has shifted. I’ve just made the fun parts more of a priority, while still fitting in work and domestic duties whenever time allows.

Tim Kreider’s well-circulated essay in last Sunday’s New York Times about what he calls “the ‘busy’ trap” was particularly timely, in my case, because it reminded me that being busy is often less about meeting obligations as about setting priorities. The past week has been busy because I didn’t want to cut back on work, housework, family obligations, or fun. I was busy because I was choosing to do all of that. But somehow it didn’t feel hectic, because I was doing what I wanted to do, both in terms of work and fun. It reminded me that when I fall into the trap that Kreider describes as being “crazy busy,” it’s usually because I’ve taken on obligations I don’t really want: community projects I feel a duty to help out with but am not adequately vested in the outcome of, or the rare work assignment that feels uninspiring and mismatched to my abilities.

So in reality, I might not find myself any less busy at all this summer from a time management perspective. Long uninterrupted days of lounging on the beach will probably not happen, at least not more than once or twice. But it’s all a matter of perspective. My time will probably continue to seem full, but I’ll keep sight of the fact that I’m doing just what I choose to do. And when that’s the case, I’m beginning to realize, being busy can seem like its own kind of leisure.