![]() “Do you love lacrosse?” Not like hockey, he said. Busy isn’t right for my oldest, who is hovering between that tennis ball on a string game (which he invented) and teenage life,Īnd who asked me a few weeks ago if I thought he should play lacrosse this spring. String, and who need a lot of unstructured time in which to do those things. My children, who like to get good and deep into every activity from Lego building to some insane repetitive game they play in the space between the kitchen island and the family room involving a tennis ball on a Busy leaves me with my shoulders pulled up tight to my ears, yelling about every little thing and driving too fast on a road I don’t even want to be on. Or maybe “busy” is the way you like to be, and if that’s the case, truly you should revel in it.īut busy isn’t for me. Maybe your family is passionate about Kumon. Maybe you love that yoga class so much that it’s worth the anxious will-I-be-there-on-time drive to pick-up (and maybe you could declare that you’ll be five minutes late every single week, and ask for And it feels even better now that the season is over, and we’ve said no to the sports and activities that aren’t passions, and are looking ahead to the rest of the school year withoutĪ single scheduled afternoon of the week. Husband, and we say no to other things not “no, I don’t have time,” but “no, that’s not how I choose to use my time.” The result doesn’t feel busy. I choose my volunteer commitment, and so does my They choose to play hockey over other options, and we choose to support that, and are lucky we can. We had a lot going on this winter, but it was all good stuff. Hockey teams among them (along with a few other assorted things), and I thought “this is what we wanted.” And I looked at a few other activities, and I thought “this, we can do without.” And maybe those choices make us feel rushed and unhappy, and maybeĪt some point during the past year, I looked at our “busy schedule” of two working parents both with big volunteer commitments during different seasons and four children with school, homework and three We choose to add in the stop at the dry cleaner and the ATM. We choose to let one child do swimming and the other soccer, on the same afternoon. We choose the yoga class that’s just far enough from an after-violin-lesson pick up that it’s a rush every single time. We, as parents, choose some of what makes us “busy.” We choose Kumon. Spend at least some of our time, and we choose whether to feel “busy” or not. But while we collectively work toward change, most of us individually can make at least a few changes - starting with admitting that we choose how we Or a society that encourages real leisure from a menu. We cannot just pick paid family leave and sick days, or work hours that align with school hours, or readily available and affordable day care Most of us can’t choose to live in a country that doesn’tĪctively make it more difficult to be both caregiver and breadwinner. Play When No One Has the Time.” As she writes, some of what makes us (particularly as parents) overwhelmed is outside of our immediate control. In her book “ Overwhelmed,” Brigid Schulte looks at “Work, Love and But doing those things one a time, and not on a day with other deadlines or while trying to squeeze in one more meeting, email or phone call often is a choice. My dented, rusting bumper is not a choice. For me, whether I go to meet with the school about one child’s Individualized Education Program is not a choice taking another to the dentist is not a choice dealing with ![]() But most of the time, “busy” is a choice, and it’s a choice I refuse to make. There are things going on, someĭays more than others, and there are things I need to do, many of which are not optional. ![]() (I’m not even sure I like bonbons.) I’m the working parent of four children. I’ll throw in the necessary caveat that I am scarcely sitting around eating bonbons. I’m where I need to be, doing, for the most part, And as often as I can -Įven when I’m dropping a child off here or there, or running an errand, or waving in the carpool line - I don’t think of myself as busy. ![]() ![]() I like to have nothing in particular to do and nowhere in particular to be. With the nagging sense you that you ought to be somewhere else doing something different. Busy is being in one place doing one thing Busy implies a rushed sense of cheery urgency, a churning motion, a certain measure of impending chaos, all of which make me anxious. Are you shocked? It feels almost wrong to say, in this moment when all my fellow parents reply to my “Hey, how’s it going?” with “Busy! Always busy!” and even fill in the same responseīut I’m not. ![]()
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