When I was young – like teenage young, I remember thinking that busy people were kind of important. They had it together. They were in demand. They had a lot of stuff to do, and they looked at their watches a lot while they talked to you, not because they were curious about time or admired their watches, but because they had something else to do soon, and you were taking their time. Whatever they had on their schedule next, was a bigger deal than you.

Somehow I developed the belief that being busy was a good thing. People who weren’t busy obviously didn’t have enough to do – which meant they probably weren’t good at anything, so they weren’t in demand. They weren’t important enough to have a busy schedule. I was kind of black and white in my thinking back then. Not necessarily correct, but certainly black and white.

Of course, now that I’ve aged and matured and developed into an actual official busy person, I’ve come to realize that being busy for the sake of being busy isn’t necessarily a good thing. It could be a good thing, but sometimes it’s not. What I’m saying is there’s Good Busy and Bad Busy. As part of my continuing service to my slowly growing small number of readers, I’ll try to help you understand these two concepts.

If you’re busy because you’re spending a lot of time with your family, that’s probably Good Busy. I say “probably,” because if you’re family is weird or annoying, it may be Bad Busy. Fortunately, the one child I have isn’t weird or annoying, so spending time with her normally falls into the Good Busy category. She’s a little quirky, but usually in a good way.

The above paragraph also applies to friends – Good Busy if they’re not weird or annoying, Bad Busy if they are. And then you may want to ask yourself why they’re even your friends in the first place, but that may need to be another blog post.

If you’re busy because you have a lot of work to do, that can be Good Busy. But this is a tricky one, because you may be working too much. Or you may be working in a job that isn’t good for you. Or you may be working in an office where they play country music all day. If any of those things are true, then that’s Bad Busy.

If you’re busy because it’s almost the end of the school year and you’re a teacher or some other school person and you have a lot of stuff to do, that’s neither Good nor Bad Busy – it’s just normal seasonal busy. The same is true if you’re a CPA and it’s early April. This also goes for early December when you have to shop and go to parties. So stop complaining about being busy during those times. It’s normal, and complaining about it gets on people’s nerves.

I’d like to take time to explain more, but I have too much on my plate right now. I’m so busy, I can’t even begin to describe it to you.