Imaginary Busy-ness

My boss gave a little presentation at a team meeting last week about the glorification of busyness. He used some now pretty much time honoured quotes and pictures illustrating that modern phenomena which so many people seem to be at least touched by. And yes … it is good to understand the difference between busy-work and productive-work ….

Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing.
Thomas A. Edison

I think what my boss was concerned about is that there have been grumblings and mumblings of “too busy” up and down the halls of the hallowed haunt to which I am bound on a Monday to Friday basis in the current version of my life as I know it. Should I be concerned then, that this is Sunday morning and I just spent the past two or three hours cleaning emails and action items from my work inbox. Am I simply inefficient? Can I not use my paid and allocated hours more wisely? Should I worry that yesterday (Saturday) morning as I sat in bed recuperating from a lurgy that I barely managed to ward off to the end of the week when I had different and more flexible (non classroom) duties, that what I did was work on a draft of my team roster for an hour or so, hoping to make all of our lives a little more organised and manage-able? Is this because I am a poor time manager?

Earlier in the year, or perhaps it was last year (it’s all a bit of a blur really) I was enrolled in a Time Management course, which I failed to attend. Unfortunately, as a rostered classroom trainer, I can’t always flex around my other duties to attend training. When I try to do so, sixteen or so people are left stranded in a room, not learning what they were sent to learn. It’s a bit of a catch twenty-two.

I DO feel very busy, much of the time I spend at my work place. I treasure the moments when I do not. Every now and then, in some pocket of time, I find a few moments to gossip or giggle quietly with a work mate and catch up on things that matter, like – if we worked smarter, rather than harder … what might it look like? How can we better serve one another? Those precious information shares that only come in the calmer moments of work – when the busy-ness slows to a steady simmer rather than remaining at that rollicking boil where it seems to be on other days. THOSE are the moments I like to brag about. I don’t enjoy bragging about busy-work. But, yes: guilty as charged … I’m sure I do complain.

Beware the barrenness of a busy life.
Socrates

I don’t want a barrenly busy life. I love my spaces of peace and pieces of space, as I have carefully pointed out in times past. I’m not a fan of or (I hope) a slave to, or addict of busy. I feel like busy is thrust upon me against my will. Busy (in the fruitless sense) is something I could well do without. Thank you very much. If someone can come along and help me to ditch my busy, that would be great!

Doing nothing is better than being busy doing nothing.
Lao Tzu

Personally, I LOVE doing nothing. I absolutely and completely adore it! I love to sit on the grass and smell the warm summer air. I love to feel the sunshine soak into my bones. I love taking long baths, or long walks on the beach. I love to climb trees and just sit in them … perhaps reading a book. I love to just lie on the couch with my love and watch nothing very much on the television. I love long drives to nowhere in particular. I am not particularly outcome driven … I love to just be. Perhaps that’s the stumbling point at work? Perhaps outcome driven is the key?

I read a line in a blog (this one: http://anunhurriedlife.org) just now about a “recovering speed addict”. You got it … not the drug … the pace of life. Yup. I reckon there are plenty of those around. I don’t buy it that I’m one of them though. Well, I don’t mean to be anyway. I’m sure my boss meant for us to do this navel gazing. I get that the point of the presentation was for precisely that reason. Fair and reasonable. But what if we are not imagining it, where to then? What if the expectations of our jobs really are too high. What if there really are not enough hours in the day? I know for sure that there definitely doesn’t feel like enough work days in my weeks to get through what I am supposed to get through! Does that mean I’m just poor at prioritising? Pick your battles they say. Well … I’m working on it. So far I don’t feel like I’m cutting the mustard on this.

So, in honour of my bosses good intentions, I will be working through lists like these in coming weeks and months:

Becoming “Unbusy”

1. Realize that being busy is a choice.

2. Stop the glorification of busy.

3. Appreciate and schedule rest.

4. Revisit your priorities.

5. Own fewer possessions.

6. Cultivate space in your daily routine.

7. Find freedom in the word, “no.”

These are all grand ideas and each quite likely deserves a post of it’s own. So many people have written about exactly those, at great (and my much wiser than I will ever be) length, that I may or may not delve into any or all of them in the future. We shall see. However, let them serve as good reminders to us all that busy is a disease that many of us need to be cured of, in one way or another.

Perhaps in future months and years my choice will be to avoid the types of employment that make me feel “too busy”. Sometimes, it’s about recognising our own skill-sets, preferences and limitations. Perhaps a job that I experience as overwhelming might feel “just right” to someone else. We are all unique in this respect.

Food for thought. Indeed.

Take it easy. Walk slowly (in Mandarin: Man manr zou) … smell the flowers!

Mountain Bikes & Motor Homes

We took ourselves off on a day out yesterday. Mr Twelve was away with his Dad down in the Hawkesbury somewhere for the weekend and Ms Twenty had only just arrived back from a couple of months road tripping to North Queensland and back and was resting up. We will see her today I imagine. Both of them in fact.

It’s not actually that often that we find ourselves with an entire Saturday to do with as we will … so we planned a day of it. We took our bikes and caught the train up towards Newcastle. Destination Bennett’s Green. We were very keen to go and have a look around at Australian Motorhomes. We had seen their display down in Parramatta at the Caravan and Camper show last weekend and there was a number of things we wanted to follow up.

The Caravan and Camper show (at Roseville Racecourse) was mind bogglingly big and there was so much information that our heads were absolutely swimming. We did collect a whole lot of brochures and through the week we had a look at a few things on line but there’s nothing quite the same as looking and touching for getting the real idea of what something might feel like to call your own.

Australian Motorhomes at Bennetts Green have a large range of Australian built motorhomes and a massive stock of pre-loved campers and motorhomes in many and various makes and models. We had a most entertaining and educational visit there yesterday. We took the train as far as Cardiff and on the strength of a conversation with a fellow on the train decided to get off there rather than Kotara. At Cardiff we holed up in the first food and beverage outlet we slapped our eyes on to get out of the howling and very nippy wind that had whipped up during the morning. The coffee at the little bakehouse turned out to be appalling but between that and our snacks it filled a hole and we felt fortified and a little warmer so set off on our ten kilometre ride to go and gaze at our dreams in the flesh – or in the metal … perhaps you could say.

We had a very pleasant ride and Tony discovered that Google maps on the phone with one ear plug stuck in your near side ear (the one away from the traffic, so you can still hear the oncomings) is a great navigational aid, but burns your iPhone battery quite a bit! On our return trip we found the app (Google maps) is even better if you actually put it in bicycle mode. It took us along some terrific bike paths and sneaked us up to Fassifern station without us really even realising where we were. Great stuff!

Back to the middle of the trip and the predetermined destination of the day. The ride there only took us about half an hour and once there we chained up our bikes to some service pipes and wandered in to gape and goggle at all of the fancy and wonderful things that modern motorhomes can provide. Even though we had looked at most of the models on the floor last weekend we were still highly entertained by getting in and out of them, opening and closing all the drawers and peering into every bathroom all over again. The one we had specifically gone to have another look at, the Avida Ceduna was unfortunately still off at a show somewhere. We were a little disappointed because that was the one that had really caught our eyes and our imaginations at the show. In a way, perhaps the fact that it was not there was a blessing because it made us explore all of the other options more thoroughly.

One of the big draws for us to pay a visit to Bennetts Green was the fact that the yard has a huge range of pre-loved vehicles ranging all the way from a monstrous and massive three hundred thousand dollar Winnebago’s with full leather lounges and sometimes washing machines and bath tubs installed (ridiculous! for our purposes anyway) down to a three thousand dollar camper trailer and pretty much everything in between. We looked at it all. Well – no – that’s not strictly correct … we looked at all of the campervans and motorhomes – both new and used. We are starting to draft of the list of the “no way” and the “must have” items and to get a pretty good feel for the things that are ‘nice to have but optional for us’ and also for the types of internal layouts that we have strong preferences for.

Pretty exciting stuff! What comes next?

Well, it’s likely to take us months, if not a year or more of looking before we find the perfect one that also fits our budget. We are quite happy (in fact more likely inclined) to purchase a used vehicle and possibly from a private owner. We have a bunch of other boxes we need to tick first … like selling houses and re-locating ourselves onto a flat block with parking. We are not quite ready to launch yet and if we buy a motorhome or large camper-van before our permanent departure rolls around, we want it to live with us – not in a storage yard somewhere. The house where we live at the present moment is a pole home with absolutely no flat yard and is basically one car parking only, and at the top of a very tight little cup-de-sac to boot. Not exactly a wonderful place to want to park a seven metre by two and a half metre vehicle on a regular or permanent basis.

The whole point of searching out and finding, then purchasing a vehicle such as the ones we are looking at is that it will become our primary home for a year or two at least, while we do things other than the (work) things we are doing at the moment and explore a bit of the country at the same time. So while we are still bound to our jobs, kids, mortgages and a such there’s no huge rush – but we do feel the time to educate and ready ourselves is now. It’s a whole big unknown area for us and the only way to be a able to rest easy once it is done – knowing that we have gotten ourselves the best possible outcome for our unique wants and needs is to do our research and leg work thoroughly and be very familiar with the market so that we can recognise “perfect” when we see it then wait until we match that up with “price”.

Ah. Dreams!!

I’ve already forgotten which one!

My memory has scrambled them all up again so I can’t tell you which model this is that Tony is checking out …