Busy

Once I had a job where I was paid a good deal of money to do very little.  I was never comfortable with this situation, so I would make up stuff to do all day, every day.  Sometimes the things I worked on had to do with my employer; but sometimes I ran out of ideas related to my employer and I immersed myself in activities unrelated to my employer.  I felt badly doing this; but the truth is, I was also a little peeved at my employer for hiring me and paying me so well for this pretend job.

The point is, related or unrelated to my employer, I was almost always occupied with one project or another.  People throughout the company would come to me with a request and usually preface his or her question with, “I know you are very busy, but…”  To which I would always reply, “I’m NOT busy; I’m just doing this project to occupy my time.”  Yet, even though I felt like I was constantly correcting the misconception that I was “busy,” I kept being referred to that way.  Finally, I realized that when people were calling me “busy,” they were really telling me that they thought I was “important.”  In this particular setting, the word “busy” meant “important.”

Ever since, I have been suspicious of the word “busy.”  It often means something very different than what we think it means.

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