Fellow cat lovers, have you ever noticed how gleefully busy your cat gets immediately after you’ve cleaned her sandbox and given her fresh litter? It’s as though she can’t do enough or do it fast enough.
I’m so there.
And, frankly, I love it. I love busy-ness. I don’t know why, but I kind of get a charge from it. It makes you feel alive – as though every one of your senses has to stay on guard because something’s about to come around the corner like Vin Diesel – guns blazing.
Intense.
That, and the fact that it’s justification for keeping chocolate and coffee in front of me. My greatest riddle in life is, “Which makes my engine hum along better, chocolate and coffee?”
I think I’ll need more work in the lab to arrive at the answer.
One of my favorite quotes is by Satchel Paige: “Sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits.” This week has been one that – on several occasions – I actually went out of my way to carve out a few chunks of time in the evening for think-free sitting. It was such an uncommonly busy week that I felt like I owed it to my psyche. While I believe that being busy is actually a darn good thing for us body and soul, it is imperative that we make quality time for our loved ones – which, of course, includes our family, pets, and even ourselves.
My extra business has been more than just this week, actually. The past few months have been kind of crazy. It’s all good, though, because I like crazy – quite a bit, actually. It’s normal that gives me the heebie jeebies… at least I think it did. Let’s see, that would have been 1980…
I’ve been swamped with online work. Again, that’s a good thing, but I don’t have a to do list anymore. I have to do lists – they start on one page then continue on the next. Then the next. Then the next. When I hear someone complain about their to do list (emphasis on singular), I want to throw all of mine at them.
But I just smile – sometimes I wink.
Here’s one of the beautiful things about being busy… ironically, it’s THEN when you actually get the most done. It’s as though the mind says, “Well, I’m already running at a frantic pace, I might as well do THIS too.. and THIS… and why not THAT?!” We went to a particular church in Madisonville, Kentucky for years and our Pastor always said that if he needed something done, he’d look for the busiest person and assign the task to them.
Why? Busy people get stuff done.
Another benefit of busyness is the fact that it keeps you sharp. Your brain cells crave activity – in fact, I’m convinced that every cell craves activity. We weren’t designed to sit and do nothing day after day. We were designed by the Creator to get busy and stay busy.
On a mental level, staying busy forces your brain to come up with new solutions. Your brain is also challenged to become more creative and to, often, think outside of the box. All of this may seem like chaos to us, but to our brains, it’s like a mental gym. Inactive, unchallenged brains are the ones headed for the most trouble. Never, ever resent extra activity for your brain – it’ll reward you for it today, tomorrow, and in years to come.
Emotionally, busyness is also a blessing dressed in work clothes. When we’re busy, we don’t have time to worry, grieve, or cave in to feelings of loneliness, sadness, envy… or any of the long list of negative emotions that can drag us down. Staying busy is actually the best remedy for just about every negative emotion on the list.
The next time you find yourself having “one of those days,” don’t recoil… rejoice! Then listen really close – you’ll hear every cell in your body buzzing.
Going Further…
What if you simply don’t have enough TO keep you busy?! I’ve heard about this from quite a few individuals and, frankly, I’d never really stopped to consider it! Being a mother of three as well as running a web publishing business and writing leaves me wondering what that must be like.
I have a lot of days when I’d LOVE to find out!
In all seriousness, though, when your life simply doesn’t have “an awful lot going on,” it’s up to you to create the busyness. The options are pretty amazing and once you start thinking of things to do, you’ll be amazed at just how many things there are just waiting to be done. Below are just a few…
- Redecorate a room in your house.
- Redecorate every room in your house!
- Plant a flower garden (or vegetable garden or herb bed).
- Adopt a cat or dog from you local shelter and make your life (and their life) something special!
- Write the next great novel.
- Learn to cook.
- Learn a new hobby.
- Get a full or part-time job doing something new and exciting.
- Write a cookbook.
- Learn to sew, quilt, or do woodworking.
- Clean/organize your closets.
- Volunteer your time to a worthy cause.
- Clean/organize your kitchen drawers.
- Start a blog.
- Take up painting.
- Take a college class or two.
- Take up yoga.
- Take online classes.
- Choose three from this list and never wonder what busy feels like again!
~ Joi
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