Something old: Busy Women
From the archives, a reflection on being busy.
This typing is dated from my Tumblr, November 26, 2017. It would have been illustrated with a gif of Sarah Jessica Parker in The Family Stone. (They are a terrible family, I love that movie, Claire Danes has no manners in it.) I was really tired this week so make do! If you can correctly guess the social occasion, buy yourself a Dairy Milk.
P.S. Emotions etc. date and that’s fine. Sometimes they calcify.
A few weeks ago I avoided a Friday evening event with peers because I didn’t have the mental energy. This is not a reflection of the people at the gathering. All lovely gals, supportive gals, fun, smart, savvy, the good kind of adjectives. Although I’ll be honest, there were some suspected guests I did want to avoid. But if we had to conduct a chat, I’d have been fine. Ask people should you start watching Stranger Things and let them off. (If you are a shy type who dreads anything with a hint of networking, it helps to remember that certain people like to be implicitly told they have expertise in how one should live a life. It’s a very easy trick.)
When Friday hits, I am zapped. I want four walls, a mattress, reading materials, a movie with explosions and a skin treatment with a warning I can’t leave the house without factor 50 for the foreseeable. This regular plateau is something I’m used to now. Sometimes, when sitting still, I admit I’ve turned joyless. When Facebook reminds me of my life over four years ago I mourn, a bit. There was one photo recently of me at a college ball. That day I attended class, ran back and forth to my campus apartment, prepared for an interview, got a blow dry on Grafton Street, went to a group interview in a corporate law firm, answered ‘introduce a wealth tax’ to the query ‘if you were in charge of Ireland, what would you do?’, showed up at the hotel, got changed in the toilet, danced, stayed out, got home.
I recently enthused to a woman about the Kindle and Audible app for rebooting a reading habit. This woman had to take long train journeys for work. She was tired. I gave her some book recommendations and strongly suggested she start her audiobook journey with Bruce Springsteen’s memoir. Then I showed her the book I had in my bag for another tip. Another woman nearby said I must have a lot of free time.
It’s a very common practice among women I know to mock busy women. And I understand that, to a mild extent. Maybe this is in other sectors, but in lifestyle media land it was like workers in the hive at events. Everyone is busy. On social media, women are plotting with expensive notebooks in minimalist cafés. New mums proclaim they never knew busy and tired and exhaustion until now. But maybe everyone is busy? I’m flat out, and yes, while I find time to read books and procrastinate online, I’m still busy. I might not have a child or plans to launch a business, but I’ve still got a full plate.
A friend messaged me over the weekend to check in, I checked back. She said she was busy, like everyone else. Already diminishing her state of being.
I think it’s screwed up how busy we all legitimately are. Do we hate the other busy woman because she raised her yellow flag first?
Today I started closing tabs on my browser before I took a proper look at the articles that piqued me. All these must-reads, those controversial screeds, they were mould on my mind as they sat there. Click, click, click. Goodbye fat in the pan. I’m going to try and make less mental commitments to links. None of those longreads were getting read anyway. URLs loomed over me. Fuck it. If we’re meant to be we’ll meet again. Like in all those second-chance romances I read in my acres of free time.