Busy Little Bees!

So, I've been thinking about busyness. I've noticed that a lot of people (myself included) ladle completely unimportant things onto their plates. This would be okay, except for our remarkable ability to convince ourselves that the things are HUGELY important. As a result we spend our lives running around like headless chooks (the very opposite of legless bovines), utterly convinced that if we stop for a moment the world will fall apart.

Some people have asked me why I don't take a break from the multitude of things that are always popping up in my diary, and I answer with: 'Because if I stop I know I won't be able to start again'.

This raises the issue of busyness for busyness' sake. It's like a car with a flat battery, rolling down a hill. It'll keep going as long as it's in motion, but as soon as it stops - well, it'll take a lot of grunt work (or a new battery) to get it moving again. I'll find myself out at bars or clubs or music gigs on three hours of sleep, with a blinder of a headache wondering what the hell I'm doing out in the middle of the city when I could've been curled up in bed, asleep.

Really, if you feel like you can't stop what you're doing, you're doing too much.

It also occurred to me that being busy is a way of avoiding our real problems by moving in circles, rather than fleeing from them in straight lines. This way, we can kid ourselves into believing we're facing them, conquering them, solving them, when really we're just distracting ourselves.