I’ve sat down about ten times to write this post. I start, delete, start again, come back, delete and then close the laptop. I think partially because I want what I have to say to come out perfect, or so as not to offend anyone or be judged for having an opinion at all. I’ve also asked myself what the point of putting my opinion on paper is? After all, it’s just that, my opinion and its only one. The next person to write a piece on the topic may have several other very valid points. So I guess it just boils down to myself wanting to put my feelings and experiences into words and if someone stumbles upon it and finds it thought-provoking or useful, great. If not, that’s totally fine.
I also feel like everything we say nowadays needs to be backed up by research or some bloody study with a full meta-analysis. I honestly started to do some research to try to find articles and studies that would back up some of what I was about to say. Turns out I definitely could find some but I then quickly got overwhelmed and decided that it just wasn’t worth the effort. Is there nothing to be said about life experience and wisdom anymore? Research and science have their place. I will preface here now that I am not trained in counselling, psychology or the like. I am a human, wife, mother, daughter, granddaughter, sister, aunt, and friend. I have worked in many different jobs. I’ve volunteered and belonged to committees and have had experience with politics. My daughters are just now both out of the nest and away at university. I’m entering a whole new chapter of life with my husband, one where we get to know each other all over again. I also have a dog. I think I have enough life behind me and hopefully in front of me to have a solid opinion or two. So here it goes. Take it or leave it.
A while back, I had the privilege to take part in a Soul Circle with Mia Jerrett. There were several of us online to discuss the topic of difficult conversations and relationships. It was like it was meant to be because I got a lot of nuggets out of the workshop. One specifically that was meant to help me write this damn post once and for all.
What is this post about anyway? It’s about the word BUSY. Its overuse misused and abused definition. The only research I will put into this post is the actual definition of the word busy from Webster’s dictionary. It goes like this, “having a great deal to do”. I bet that sounds familiar. Who doesn’t have a great deal to do?
The word has become a massive trigger for me over the years. I think it started back when I was very young and I would hear other women complain to my mother about “how busy they were”. I think the underlying insinuation was that my mother didn’t have a job outside of the home so she couldn’t possibly understand. I can guarantee without a shadow of a doubt that my mom could have run circles around most women. Her job was to do the bookkeeping including payroll for forty employees for the business that she and my dad ran together as well as take care of two kids who were involved in every extra-curricular activity in town. My dad worked long days out of town in the day of no cell service. There was no sharing of parental and household duties, my mom did it all and never once did I ever hear her complain about it. What I did see was the look on her face when another person would say, “oh it must be nice not to work” or “I never have time to bake because I work”. My mom was the woman that did payroll in the office in our basement after she had cooked dinner, cleaned up, bathed the kids, read the bedtime story and baked the fucking cookies at midnight so that we all had home baking for the lunch boxes she got up at six am to pack for us before school and work.
Some would call this type of person a martyr and I agree to some extent. However, recently my mom said something that really stuck with me. At almost 70, she is still the same. Just watching her, I get exhausted. She never sits still and we all give her a hard time about it. This summer she said, I know you guys give me a hard time about cooking and cleaning and baking but that is what brings me joy. It brings her joy and if joy is what it brings, let her be.
Through the years I have had countless experiences with people who define themselves by being “busy”. “Oh hello Nancy, its been forever since I’ve seen you! How are you?” Nancy replies, “Oh busy, just non-stop on the go all the time.” Or at the PTA meeting, “I don’t have time to volunteer or bake for the bake sale, I’ve got work and 800 meetings and the husband is out of town and the kids have this and that.”
Its those people, mostly women in my experience who you encounter at work, your kids’ school, wherever and start listing off their to-do lists and it seems the longer it is the more credit they earn. What they seem to be forgetting is that they created those to-do lists whether they realize it or not. They created them by choice. Choices that they have made as priorities whether they realize it or not. Those choices and priorities were made for one of two reasons: 1. they have been taught that busyness is worn as a badge of honour or 2: they have created busyness to distract from one or several larger issues or problems going on in their life.
I can recall a time in my life when I too had created a lot of busyness in my schedule and although at the time I didn’t realize it. I now know, especially based on the outcomes of that time that I was attaching busy to self-worth. I had moved back from university to my hometown with a degree in business and was ready to take on the world. My fiance worked for his parents in their business and had completed a trades apprenticeship. He had a very well-paying, secure job. The unknown of lifting the little roots already in the ground was more than a little terrifying. So the deal was, that I would look for a job at home and in 3-6 months time, if I hadn’t found anything suitable, we would head for the big city.
I did find a job! A really good, union, government-paying job. It had a steep learning curve and was putting my degree to good use. I loved the challenge until the challenge was no longer there and I felt beaten down by the lack of progress I could make with so much bureaucracy and red tape. I started to very quickly despise my job. But again, the pay was good. We were now married in our very early twenties and playing life out just as our parents did. The things that you are “supposed to do”. Get married, buy a house, get a dog, and have a baby. So by the age of 26, I had two daughters. Over the years with them, I had various jobs. Full-time, part-time, contract, work-from-home, you name it. I was always “busy”. I then did the thing where you put them in 800 extra-curricular activities, throw birthday parties to top the last one you had been at, volunteered for a dozen committees, ran as a school board trustee and had every minute of every day scheduled. I was still miserable. I still didn’t know who I was and I was resentful that I didn’t have the career that my university friends and peers had in the big city. So I buried myself in things that would make me look like my life was amazing and that I was a smart, hardworking woman. Not just a young mom in a small town.
I kept jumping from one thing to the next trying to find myself and the next big thing. Eventually, that next big thing was latching on to a personal trainer and signing up for a bodybuilding competition. Looking back, that was a very dark time in my life and one I won’t go into detail about here but it was once again, a form of avoidance. I was still trying to find some sort of validation of my worth. It did teach me a very valuable lesson in the end when I ended up sick in the hospital due to starving myself and over-exercising. It pointed me in the direction of becoming a trainer myself and helping others find their way. It was a long, hard path and although I don’t regret it now, sometimes I look back and wish I had had the wisdom I have now back then. I guess that’s why they say we get better with age.
I could blame my circumstances on so many things. My unhappiness was because I had this belief that I wasn’t worthy unless I had some big fancy career. I thought I was a basic small-town girl, with two kids and a job that wasn’t a career. I buried myself in committees and volunteering and kids activities to appear to others that I was a go-getter.
I did love my career as a trainer until that too burnt me out. Ironically enough, the part of that that burnt me out was trying to help others see that their busyness was also a distraction from things that they were avoiding in their own lives. Busy was not a word that was allowed in my presence. I would always correct my clients and tell them that they were making certain things a priority over others. I would say 85% of those people were also using busy to avoid some very difficult things in their lives.
Covid was what finally empowered me to do some deep self-reflection. When the world shut down and I lost the business my friend and I had been working on for over a year and when my kids were at home and locked down from all of their extra-curricular activities it was as if time was standing still. It was uncomfortable and foreign. All we had was time, how was I going to fill it? The depression sank in very hard and I knew I needed to pull myself out of it. So I reached out to Mia Jerrett who I had met and worked together on a presentation at a canfitpro conference in 2019. Funny how the stars align sometimes, I knew in that time of darkness, I needed her coaching to finally face what I had been avoiding for so long.
I am now at a point in my life where I have an abundance of “free time”. I’m not working outside of the home, nor do I have the desire to do so right now. I’m very grateful that my husband and I own a business that can afford me to do this. My girls have both graduated and just this September I became a first-time empty nester. No running kids here or there, no travel for competitive sports, no meetings, no day-to-day chores that revolve around a family of four. Most of the time, it’s just me and my dog! I also have never been so content in my entire life. I attribute that to knowing exactly what I am worth and that a job, career, or busy status is not in any way, shape or form tied to my worth. I am also more confident than ever if someone asks me “what I do” (for a living). I simply state that I am retired. I usually get a laugh or the statement that I look much too young to be retired. I simply smile and say, “I know, it’s fantastic. I love my life.” No other explanation is required. I no longer feel the need to explain what I do with my days or my time. That is my business and nobody else’s.
So if this post was to be read for only one thing, it is that if you find yourself defining yourself as “busy” when talking to others or rattling off your to-do list that is a mile long, take a pause. Ask yourself if you are avoiding something and what that something is. Are you attaching your self-worth to being busy? You are more than your jam-packed schedule. Its also nobody else’s business what you do with your valuable and precious time.
~yours forever rambling… Olivia xxoo