“Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.”
-John Lennon-
So this week we are going to take another break from our previously scheduled programming and do something completely different. In the upcoming weeks I will conclude the thrilling final handful of chapters for The Ballad of Footeastman, but in the meantime I have gotten busy and thought it might be helpful to share my tips with you on what to do when you are too busy to do anything.
First let me start with how I got busy.
Getting busy is an art form. One does not get busy in stasis (though believe me, during my teenage years, I tried…i promise that is the last double entendre…but i also promise i am probably wrong about that…so so so so wrong…see?). But to get busy you need only start by being agreeable. Most people find me to be an agreeable man. Stinky and hairy yes, but agreeable in the personable senses that don’t require physical interaction (so basically any sense not sight, scent, sound, taste or touch). I am psychically agreeable. And being agreeable, I tend to agree. I am agreeably agreeable with the proof being that I am currently agreeing to this agreement. I self agree (totally promise that isn’t entendre) that I agreed to committing to this article without thinking twice. I can’t think twice because I am so damn busy!
I’m too busy now to even explain how busyness comes from agreement. You can disagree with me all you like, but if you do, you are probably not busy. Here I am typing out one of the more long-winded non-explanations for busyness ever committed to wherever we are because I am too busy to do anything else. I’m so busy I can only get busier. I’m so busy I made a list of what to do when you are busy. Check this out…
||| WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU ARE BUSY |||
Ignore your responsibilities
Confront your responsibilities
Apologize to your responsibilities
Start a band with your responsibilities
Tour with your responsibilities
Apologize to your responsibilities responsibilities
Hire your responsibilities responsibilities as roadies
Quit
Rehire yourself
Fire yourself
Pretend what you did was a startup
Call it REspawns instead but spell it RE-👶-🍕
Get canceled by pizzagaters who think you are eating babies
Eat a baby sized pizza and post it to twitter to fuel troll flames
Dress as a troll
Move to Sweden to meet trolls
Realize that is not where trolls are from
Move to Norway and meet actual trolls
Sell your life story to those trolls
Sue them when they tell the wrong story
Team back up with them to sell a legal drama called Troll vs. Troll
Hire Kevin Bacon to play yourself
Become friends with Kevin Bacon
Help Kevin Bacon sell Kevin branded Bacon
“Beware the barrenness of a busy life.”
-Socrates-
There are many different types of busy. Let me commit to a fictional back and forth, four-second theater performance between someone who isn’t busy talking to someone who is busy.
THE UNBEARABLE BUSYNESS OF BUSYING BUSINESS
[a series of 4 seconds plays by the super very busy playwright Sir (pronounced dur) CansaFIs Foote]
The Stage Crew
ACTOR ONE :: Faliadulphew aka F.U. - Someone who is not busy but wants the busy person to help them. They are dressed in a pea green cloak.
ACTOR TWO :: Boliodolphio aka B.O. - Someone who is some type of busy. They are wearing a chin strap.
*editor’s note :: there is no significance to the names, I just wrote them using the first stupid thoughts that came into my head, they are a bad joke and I don’t care because as I said…i am busy…
ACT ONE :: BARELY BUSY
F.U. - “Are you busy?”
B.O - Shrugs, eats a croissant.
ACT TWO :: KINDA BUSY
F.U. - “Are you busy?”
B.O. - Turns head and stares confused at scene partner. Slice the croissant with an oversized knife.
ACT THREE :: BUSY
F.U. - “Are you busy?”
B.O. - Nods and drools apologetically on the croissant which he then throws away out of scene. An extra from backstage should yell ouch.
ACT FOUR :: TOO BUSY
F.U. - “Are you busy?”
B.O. - “I’m so busy I wrote this four part play.”
…and scene…
“Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings.”
-Jane Austen-
The word busy originated from a sense of anxiousness, and/or constant and ongoing action, and no doubt this is how we built ourselves into a world dominated by business, an entire type of busyness devoted to devoting people to the tasking of doing as many things as they can at all points. The more people you keep busy the better your bus(y)iness. Unless you work in crypto in which case your business is likely just a scam. I do not feel scammed, I feel busy.
I think I said I would give you tips on what to do if you find yourself in the same type of situation as me; busy. In the throes of this business (busyness?) I first recommend you take no advice, for to take advice would be to add one more thing to your already busy task list. If you have a task list pull it out and add a task to make no more tasks. You are overtasked at the moment and it is taxing (tasking?) for me to task you with such tasks. If you have taken my advice now you are busier, but the bright side is you are on the way to having a successful busyness (business?).
You might as well lean in at this point and go full blast towards overwhelmingly incredibly super extremely beyond busy, which for sake of simplification we can refer to as being bizzy. You are a bizzard. So at this point you might as well stop reading. No one as busy as you should have time to consume any advice, let alone advice from someone as busy as me, who is as busy as you.
And accepting we are the same, two people so busy that they agree their busy is a busy divided-yet-paired through writing and readership, perhaps we should trade places? Maybe my busy would be less busy if it was yours and/or if your busy was mine. I mean, if I had your busy, at least I can feign ignorance as to whatever I was busy with in the first place. And whoever is depending on you will likely no longer do so after they find out that you gave me your business (busyness?). Free of dependance, and with busyness you have no business in, understand you can move onwards unto a new busyness (business?). Though please note there is something special about the busy that I have given you.
What could be so special about my busy, you ask? Well I ask you the same question, because to be honest I no longer remember what I was busy about in the first place. My busy is now yours and you probably know better than me at this point. So take a deep breath, and look deep and long at that task list in front of you. I don’t know if it is mine, or yours, or ours, but we should probably give it to someone else in the hopes that they join our business (busyness?).
I thought I would be too busy to read this but then I just added on to my businesses business by reading it 🙃
Lol'd on the "Move to Norway and meet actual trolls"
I've dealt with this issue myself, a while back. Upon introspection, I discovered that when I have too many projects going on, I sometimes feel a strong sense that I'm not doing enough for those projects. And when I get that feeling of not doing enough, I get the urge to add more projects, as if that's what was missing. Once I identified the defective reasoning, I became a little less busy.