“Busyness” equals over-thinking and stress. Over-thinking: being too
panicky; more jangling and swirling around in the mind than need be.
Stress: the point of being impatient with waiting and wanting it to be
all over with. Whatever ‘it’ is. That job, that class, that concert
where the band is playing too long, the movie that rolls on past 120
minutes with content that doesn’t deserve that much detail. Just let it
be over with. Just let it be something else.
Of course it depends on how these all these terms are used. To me,
busyness is the time where I learn the least and am on survival alert.
Busyness thrives on a constant inertia from activity. No stopping, just
sheer activity. Running from one assignment, schedule, plan, to the
next.
This week I was setting strategies to the revolutions of a clock in
order to maximize operational efficiency. My attendance rate was 100
percent; however, the object of my attention was divided on numerous
occasions, bifurcated into a mantra of “Got to read this, got to write
this, then e-mail this, call over here…” My sleeping rate was, if I
could put it into percentage points, would be something like 30
percent. That’s been going for longer than a week, too.
So this is overwrought with thought. The words cannot equal what
they sound like in my head. I try to compose them there, instead of
just writing whatever wants to come out, and trusting in that. Or even
better, believing in it.
I’ve started this list of words. Malady. Cypher. Erudite.
Approbation. I don’t know what any of them mean, I just like the way
they sound, they way they look and the way they read. The last one I
heard from Mike, toward the end of Friday. It was “sacrosanct.” That’s
one definition I wish I could forget that I remembered.