I hated being called a busy person.
When emails, texts or DMs read ‘I know you are a busy person’, I would cringe and feel a strong desire to reject that statement.
“Who told you that I was a busy person? Where did you hear these lies?” I would say to myself while I typed: “Thank you for understanding. The past few days have been quite busy with work”.
Accepting that I was busy felt like a lie. I saw myself as a lazy person who spent hours watching Netflix, making herself lunch, going to bed at 1 a.m. and waking up at 9:50 a.m. for her 10 a.m. therapy session. How could I be busy when I spend my days resting or going on long walks from Costain to Leisure Mall? How could I see myself as active when I had the leisure of choosing what I did with my time? Besides, there was no such thing as “being so busy”. It was something people said to make themselves feel better for responding to your emails four days late.
To me, being busy meant I was unavailable, unreachable and inaccessible. It meant that I had an inflated sense of importance, and what anyone else was doing did not matter as much as what I was doing.
“You know you are busy. I cannot just call you anytime”.
Statements like this would hurt. After all, I did not want people, especially those I loved, to see me as difficult to access because I wanted them to see me as reliable and reachable.
Seeing myself as busy meant my life should look a certain way. I should own certain material things and hold a certain social status within my community. I should have a car or live in a fancier place. Why am I not winning awards or reaching all these milestones I had set for myself? How do I justify being busy when I do not have these markers to show for it? I have been wasting time.
When my friends, strangers, or colleagues send me reassuring messages that celebrate the effort I put into building NDIDI and my photography practice, I welcome them, then shove it off by saying to myself that I am not doing anything special. Anyone can do what I do. When my team writes in our quarterly peer review forms that I should take more breaks, I smile and say to myself that I am resting because I am about to go to bed.
I felt guilty and continuously beat myself up when goals or targets went unaccomplished until last month when I decided to assess my life honestly. There had to be something that people were seeing that I was not that would cause them to refer to me as such. Besides, there were people I knew I could refer to as busy people so what was “busy” about me?
I am a busy person. I am not lazy in the least. I go to bed late because these quiet nights are the times I have to myself. I work as a therapist and can have therapy sessions for 3-4 hours. Once those are over, I begin my work as the practice's clinical director, ensuring that emails, systems and processes are attended to. As I wear that hat, I also have to take care of my clients and respond to their needs. Everyone on the team has requests. The finance team needs confirmation for transactions, reports need writing, and documents need reviewing. The social media team is asking for content or approval of new content, or I need to study to prepare for a lecture or training.
I am a photographer who is currently working on a new project. I have photoshoots to schedule, photos to edit, residencies/grants to apply for and some new materials to study to help me write about what I am working on.
Attending to emails and WhatsApp messages from NDIDI alone can take up to 4 hours of my days. I still need to make lunch, keep in touch with friends and family, and make time for my well-being. Sometimes, I work from 8 p.m. to 12 a.m. to catch up on the new emails that have entered my mailbox after work ends at 5 p.m.
When I sit down at night to reflect on all I have done for the day, damn, it is a lot, and there is still more to do. It is not always easy balancing a creative career with a clinical one while trying to explore new opportunities and interests. It explains why I wake up some mornings and cry for 5 minutes because I feel tired and overwhelmed. I wipe my tears and get on with it because people depend on me for their livelihood and well-being.
Admitting and accepting that I do a lot has not been easy, but it has given me space to feel less guilty about not being available. I see my time realistically and not from a place of guilt mixed with a sense of failure. I recognise that I have not been good at valuing the effort I put into making my career work. I minimise it and compare myself to unrealistic standards and other people’s accomplishments.
I do a lot, and I do enough. I work hard and smart. It is okay to take some time off work after working every day for months. Time off does not mean that I am lazy or inefficient. Rest is a part of productivity, and it is necessary to admit and accept how hard I have been working so I can estimate, as accurately as possible, the amount of rest I need.
It is okay to shut down my laptop and rest my eyes. A long day is a long day. A busy day is a busy day for me. Delays are delays because there is a queue of priorities, and sometimes, that priority is me.
I have not completely let go of the guilt or shame attached to being busy and unaccomplished goals. But, at least, I am more forgiving of myself when it takes me three months to write a new letter to you.
Cheers to us, my dear companion, for constantly trying to make our dreams come true while staying alive, healthy and happy. Adulting itself is a full-time job.
With love,
A