Happy 9/9/09! I'll be gone most of this week, so I've set up for a few thoughtful posts that I've pulled from my drafts folder and other journals to magically appear while I'm gone. Have a great week!
Why the Heck AM I so busy? I got some interesting off-line responses to my previous post about my crazy 13 days. All loving, friendly things, and so reasonable and thoughtful that I just started to wonder. "Is there something WRONG with me that I can't seem, at least in my writing, to sit still?" So, here are the results of my ruminations (which word has reference to a cow chewing its cud-exactly what I do with every piece of information that crosses my brain-I chew on it forever): The bottom line for me is that having friends and even being happy and cheerful has always been a choice I have to make, because I'm actually a terrible introvert with strong tendencies toward anxiety and depression. Therein lie the reasons I choose to stay so ever-loving busy. I choose to be happy and have friends. For me, the best way out of a dark or too thoughtful mood is to go do something either for or with someone else.
The thing is, if I really had my most secret druthers, I'd be in a little cottage on a windy island somewhere off the coast of Scotland. I'd sit by my fire and read and knit all day long and never leave it except to go take photos on the beach and go the mailbox for my latest Amazon shipment. I'm sure I'd email people and I might blog, but I'd NEVER have to make another phone call and I'd only see people in person to obtain food or yarn (and they'd be speaking Gaelic, so I wouldn't have to make ANY small talk or be expected to be witty or impressive).
I love quiet days with nothing on the calendar, but, in spite of my hermit fantasies, I recognize that those empty days, they aren't so good for me. I just think too much. About everything! So, rather than worrying about what a maniac I am with my busy life, I try to be happy that I'm not inside, watching my 17th consecutive episode of NCIS on the USA network, having not spoken to another human in 36 hours, and starting to imagine that my pillow looks like Mark Harmon (in the absence of a handy Scottish Island, what I just described tends to be my hermitage of choice). That would make for some boring blog posts for sure, plus something in the deepest part of my soul tells me that I'm meant for better things than re-runs or even sitting alone in a cottage.
So, I fight the urge to do nothing, and I fight the urge to be shy and a bit sad and I fight them hard. Besides, is everyone really that much less busy than me? I'm sorry, I have to ask, because busy is the adjective often used FIRST to describe me and I just don't think of myself that way, at least not in any abnormal way. It may seem silly to get defensive about, because I really do think it is meant as a sort of complement, but not always, and I guess that description bothers me because it makes me worry that maybe I'm busy for no good reason, or that I take on too much, or that I'm telling about what I do to somehow brag or draw attention to myself, or that I'm not really noticing what's really important. I guess I can think of other adjectives that I'd rather use to describe myself. I'd rather focus on who I am rather than what I do because that can all go away anytime and I think (or at least I hope) I'd still be the same person even if I had to learn to "do" a whole different set of things, or even if I wasn't able to "do" anything.
Anyway, I take a nap pretty much every day! How busy can I be? I think I'm probably just too forthcoming. I have only a few filters when I blog and writing about all the stuff I do is, frankly, all I can usually think of to blog about. Writing about the empty hours in between when I'm folding laundry doesn't seem like such good writing, and I'm just not clever or disciplined enough to keep up on book reviews, politics or what's going on in the world. So, maybe that's the problem. I just need pretend I'm clever and disciplined, start writing about other things and leave the details of my life to the imagination.
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I've never thought of you as 'too busy'. I think that you stay busy, but that is a very different idea. You know what they say about idle hands. :-) You're a good woman, who uses her time wisely. Please don't go hide in Scotland, I would miss you too much. :-)
ReplyDeleteOh, Kellie, I think we have so much in common!! I love this post, and I envy your vision of an escape place... that would be nice, although I wouldn't have much use for the crafty supplies... just give me a healthy supply of books and an internet connection, and I'd be a happy gal. :)
ReplyDeleteAh, Kellie. I could have written this post about myself. Except, if I DO see humans, I often talk too long, too loud, and about too much, and then I hate remembering it and I revert back into my hermitage. But I have to exert myself now that I'm in a new place--I have not the luxury of being a hermit when I want and a friend when I need. Friends are good to have, hard to make.
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