Too Busy to Blog

Lately, whenever I think to myself, "I really need to start blogging again," the mental response has been instant and consistent: I'm too busy. The revelation here is that while I do lead a full (borderline overflowing) life, it's not actually scheduling that makes me "too busy" to do some of the things I'd really like to do. In fact, for me, "busy-ness" doesn't have much to do with time at all.

Busy, for me, is a mind game. Come to think of it, last time I had this revelation I think I called it "cognitive white space." (yes, I am apparently an exceptionally slow learner)

Feeling "too busy to blog" is less about the time to sit at the computer and write and more about the mental state to come up with something worth writing. When I feel "too busy," what I'm really experiencing is a mind too cluttered, too frantic to process my life. When mentally too busy, I can't step back and take in the big picture, make connections and weave meaning out of my somewhat schizophrenic interests and engagements. The peculiar corollary is that with a "free" (that's the opposite of "busy," right?) mind, I seem to develop an astonishing capacity to take what we typically think of as "busy-ness" (the calendar variety) in stride.

And just like the kind of busy-ness that has to do with blocks of time on the calendar, this kind of "busy" is entirely up to me.