I laughed out loud when a man I was dating said I was “busier than a one eyed cat watching two mouseholes.” I had to think for a moment what that meant. I closed one eye and pretended I was watching 2 places on the wall. That’s pretty busy alright! If I remember correctly, because its been some years ago, he made the statement after I had rattled off my plans for the week.
The best part of being a mom when the kids were little was the flurry of activities that the boys and I were involved in. I didn’t see their many activities as a hassle even when they overlapped and kept me from something I wanted to do. I enjoyed the busyness. Occasionally, like last weekend when I blogged about how good it felt to have nothing planned, I will stop, re-focus and then I’m off and running again.
Somehow, I manage to fit in all the activities and people that I care about into my life and find that I am truly, truly happy doing that.
I think that as long as you are busy doing things which fulfill you, or help other people that that’s a good thing to be. I saw this quote on a calendar in my office “Its not so much how busy you are, but why you are busy. The bee is praised, the mosquito is swatted.”
As busy as I am, some of my best memories were of waking up early in the morning when I would visit my parents in Kingfisher and sitting on the covered back porch at their house with my mom sipping coffee and watching the cows move around in the pasture behind their house. It was during those times, before the hustle and bustle of the day when the grandkids were awake and my mom’s focus went from me to them that I felt completely at peace, all was right with the world. My mom intuitively knew what was on my mind, what to say, how to comfort me if I was hurting even if I hadn’t spoken. Her life was busy. But like mine, busy with a purpose. She was involved in doing things she loved, she was involved in caring for other people, nurturing friendships and relationships.
When I think of her the phrase comes to mind “blessed is the person who is too busy to worry in the daytime and too sleepy to worry at night”. That’s how my life is right now. Worry has taken a backseat to just “being”.
When the boys were really young, I worked out of my home as a Marketing Manager for a company located in Chicago. My days were filled with phone calls to merchandising reps, lining them up for jobs we had in various locations. All my “managing” was done via the phone, I rarely met the people who worked for me. The boys and I might be in the middle of baking cookies, or making a craft, or watching a movie but when the phone rang and I said, It’s a work call, they knew that meant that I was “busy” with my job and they rarely interrupted me. There were a few times that I bribed them with dollar bills to be extra quiet so that a CEO on the phone wouldn’t realize that I was at home in my nightgown playing Candyland with 2 precious boys while we discussed revenues and project specs. I learned to balance being a mother, being a manager and all the other hats I was wearing pretty well. Those early years were some of my happiest and I believe it was because I was too busy to worry about life. I just lived it. Embraced it even!
It’s been said that the “happiest people are those who are too busy to notice whether they are or not” . I like that.
My dad called this morning to see if I was ‘alive”because I haven’t been on facebook as much and I haven’t been “bogging” as much lately. LOL I’m just adjusting right now. My passion for blogging and facebooking and everything else is still there. I’m spending a lot of time with Joe and loving it, rehearsals for the upcoming follies have been added to my schedule, choir and handbells are back in full swing. I just agreed to be the Church Board Secretary and am happy to do it. Finding time to exercise has become more challenging but I am managing that. Carving away a few moments of solitude to pray and reflect is not optional in my day. Managing to see Andy for dinner on one of his days off is a priority. Sometimes at the end of the week, I think back on what all I’ve done and I amaze myself.
I googled trying to find a quote about time well spent and found a bunch. These two are my favorites.
Much may be done in those little shreds and patches of time which every day produces, and which most men throw away. Charles Caleb Colton
Time = Life, Therefore, waste your time and waste of your life, or master your time and master your life. Alan Lakein
I feel like I’ve done that. Its taken me 53 years to accomplish but I have mastered my time and mastered my life. I have room for improvement. Sometimes I will sit and watch some mindless tv show that I’m not really interested in for no other reason than a distraction. And that’s ok. More often than not these days though I am using that “wasted time” because the older I get it seems the faster life goes by and I don’t want to have any regrets about things I wanted to do but didn’t and have the reason be because I “wasted time”.
My health continues to improve as I have watched what I eat and continued to exercise. That’s a prime example of using wasted time. When Lent rolled around in March last year I decided to participate in the “give something up” tradition. Since I was already dieting and had given up pretty much all the things it would be considered a sacrifice to give up, I decided to give up laziness. That’s when I cut out 30 minutes of mindless vegging in front of the tv and vowed to walk 30 minutes a day. That 30 minutes has changed my life. It has boosted my confidence, improved my health, given me 30 minutes of thinking time as I walk. Who knows how much time I have added to my life in health benefits of losing weight and exercising alone. More years to love the people I love, more years to do the things I love to do. What a gift!
Ok so, here’s one more quote that I liked. And have taken to heart.
Waste your money and you're only out of money, but waste your time and you've lost a part of your life. Michael LeBoeuf
I’m good at the doing the first, trying to get better. I used to be good at the 2nd, but not anymore. And that ……makes me happy.
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