Being "Busy"

I went to bed too early.  9:15pm.  I woke up a little before 1am.  Grrrrrrr.... I hate my stupid insomnia. I have all three versions:  can't get to sleep initially, wake up in the middle of the night, and then waking up too early (although I have to say the third one is a fairly rare occurrence).  I wish I was one of those people who could fall asleep immediately and wake up 6-8 hours later. I always envied a past boyfriend who could do that,  close his eyes anywhere and be dead asleep within 2 minutes as I toss and turn for hours trying to get to sleep.

I've had lots of blogging topics going through my head lately.  It's been a week where I am conscientiously trying to spend time on specific tasks between getting home from work and going to sleep (or at least trying to sleep), but I find myself blogging in my head as I am doing my other projects.  I just wish I could capture my stream of consciousness thinking blogs.  I suppose they'll come back to me if they were that important.

One thing that I've been noticing is how freaking busy everyone has been claiming they are.  Do you know how many "I'm busier than anyone else" diatribes I have heard lately?  I just don't get it.  Why do people do this?  Yes, we're all busy; there are a zillion competing priorities for our time that we ALL have. You do, I do.  It's kind of like money.  We ALL can put $1 million to use somehow, but most of us don't have $1 million at our disposal.  Instead, we have far less than that and a zillion spending options, but we're adults that have to make deliberate choices on how we will spend the money.  Same thing with time.  Claiming we don't have enough money for everything is a valid claim, but it's just one of those "duh" moments.  You have to prioritize your money for the things you want to do.  Just like with time.

When I hear one of these diatribes people tell me about having no time (which of course wastes MY valuable time listening to them), of course I wonder why they're doing it.  Are they martyring themselves and just want acknowledgment from me that they are indeed the busiest people in the world?  Do they feel like they do more stuff than I do and are trying to prove that? Is it all an act?  I just don't know. Then part of me feels a little guilty because I don't feel completely overwhelmed.  I mean, I don't see myself as overly busy. I do work full-time, have a child, have a husband, have a long list of "to-do's," but I can fit things in if I really want to.  I'm not sure if it's because I have a firmer grasp of time/priorities or if indeed everyone else is so much freaking busier than I am.  I suppose my "really busy" threshold is if I'm at the office for 12 hours a day for several days in a row, have an incredible long task list that I cannot make even a small dent in because of multiple constraints, extreme frustration/stress, absolutely no ability to partake in any activities I enjoy (exercise, blogging, reading, etc.).  For me, that's "really busy."  A week or two of that would get me to say that I've been really busy. However, outside an oddball week here or there, I cannot legitimately say that happens all that much. Even during our epic move and overwhelming amount of house projects, I still blogged on a steady basis and could make time to read a book. 

Maybe it comes down to the fact that I define "busy" differently than the people who give diatribes on being busy.  Or maybe if they actually spent less time giving those diatribes on being busy and instead did stuff, they might feel better.  Or maybe they just like to have something to complain about.

There are so many potential root causes.

P.S.  A reader told me that the white text on black gives her headaches. I like the white on black (reminds me of the Unix days), but I don't read my own blog. So, in an effort to be more readable but not abandon the look I'm going for, I'm going to try to mess with fonts and text size to see if I can make it more readable. So it will kind of be an eye test: 1 or 2, 3 or 4, 1 or 2.  Please yell at me if I'm making it worse or if I do need to make it black on white versus the other way around.