Still Busy. Just Quieter About It.

There was a time when I found it hard not to write about how busy I am.  I tried to stop myself, because I find it annoying when people talk about how busy they are.  Maybe because I’m easily annoyed or possibly because it’s usually said in the form of an excuse.  I also thought it would be cool to seem all stoic about it.  Like getting no sleep has no effect on me or I just work and work with no awareness of time passing.

That’s probably the most surprising part. The words I wrote to myself in my journal before this semester started seemed to suggest that I wouldn’t even have time to think.  Like, I was going to put my head down and not look up until mid-May.  The truth is that I have nothing but time to think.  First of all, I spend more hours awake than I ever have before.  And, second of all, it’s actually harder to avoid yourself when you’re at work 15 hours a day with a constant awareness of every hour passing and without your full arsenal of distractions.

Now that I think about it, what’s more surprising is that I feel fine.  I would have expected a nervous breakdown by now.  Or maybe just failure.  But, I’m doing as well in school as I always have and I have more side projects going than any person should.  I actually feel more engaged in my life than I have in a long time.  Ever, maybe. For reasons including mostly taking control of my finances, but also moving on from stressful work situations, I no longer feel like I’m avoiding things.  I wanted that for myself for a really long time.  I always imagined it would take the weight of the world off of my shoulders, but I never imagined that freedom would make me feel so excited about the things I’m doing and the places I’m going.  I’m not quite as kick ass as Veronica Mars yet, but I’m just saying, “World, watch your back, because I’m coming for you.”

For someone who has always valued her alone time more than anything, it is a surprise to me to be so happy being so busy.  For a while, I questioned whether this was really healthy.  We have this idea in our culture that you shouldn’t be too attached to anything, like work or a guy or technology.  Like you should be happy just sitting alone in a white room or, more idyllically, on a tropical island.  At least, that’s what I thought.  Like, the real test of me was not needing anything or anyone.  Of course I see how complete dependence on anything is problematic.  And, I do think that happiness is something you find with yourself and not in external circumstances (this is what happy people say and this is what I say as a happy person myself). But, what’s life without real relationships where you depend on other people and you’re engaged in the things you spend your time doing?  It’s one thing when you count on these things making you happy and they don’t.  It’s another thing when you find yourself happy in the middle of it all.

Not that it’s just that simple.  Because Summer is approaching and I would be lying if I said that the thought of continuing to work 55 hours a week, even without the extra burden of school, didn’t trouble me some.  I feel this weird pressure to make valuable use of the free time I’ve been missing all these months.  Like, it would almost be easier to keep up the crazy pace where I don’t have to think of what to do with my time, because there isn’t any.  The other part of me craves wide open spaces and the decision of how to fill my days.

I don’t have enough perspective to tell whether this all makes me sounds like a crazy person.  I don’t know if everyone has existential anxiety about time and not having enough of it and not making enough of what you do have.  I guess it’s a particularly INFJ thing to always be striving and it’s like the more I do, the more I realize I can do and then the more I think I must do.  It often sounds bad to my ears.  Like, I should be talking more about vacation and self-acceptance and disconnecting.  But, it makes me happy, so there’s that.

I know we talk a lot about balance, but I think balance is less about walking a straight line and more about zigging and zagging back and forth, always going too far and then overcorrecting in the other direction.  I know I enjoy life more this way than when I was flat lining it.  There will come a point where my desire to be the one twittering about going out for drinks on a random Wednesday night instead of the one at work reading about it will be too great and then I will slow down.  And then I’ll get bored and speed back up again.  I’m learning that I don’t have to try to live now the way I will live forever.  There will be phases to my life.  This one is crazy, but probably not the craziest to come.  I hope not, anyway.