It’s Thursday

I Don’t Want to Be Busy

And why I need high quality items

I don’t want to be busy because busyness takes away from the creativity I value. I want room to think, to notice things, and to do something simply because it interests me – not because it needs to get done. Happiness means waking up without immediately feeling pressured. Yet on many mornings, I sit up in bed as if someone has said something outrageous and stolen my favorite pair of shoes. Even the room seems built for productivity: the hard wooden floor, the furniture, the sunlight drawing unwanted shapes across the walls. Before the day has even begun, I feel pushed to be useful. What I want instead is space to be spontaneous.

Happiness means having someone I can be completely myself around. Half the time, my mother is out the door before I can say anything. I feel childish for wanting her to sit down for show-and-tell, but I want her attention, not another task completed. Even the way we think about babies reveals a difference: she seems to see them as incomplete pieces of a larger mural, while I see them as social beings with their own ways of knowing us. I can be myself around the dogs, but they fidget, scraping and scratching at their plastic crates. Apart from the pictures I keep, I don’t feel that I have someone I can be myself around. Busyness leaves little room for connection; it makes me feel as though I have to put on a show.

Happiness means laughing at something ridiculously silly. By the time I’ve come to terms with my…