Busy as a mark of superiority

[Anonymous]

Some people just don't like watching TV. I am not one of those people but honestly, I cannot tell you the last book I read. I don't dislike reading but at the end of the day, my brain just wants to zone out. I used to read on the Metro but am now WAH so rarely make the time to read. So a conversation about the latest books (that aren't made into movies/shows) would be useless to me.

Some people are really bad at time management. The two friends I have who complain about being so busy and 1. childless with a low-level job and 2. a SAHM with kids in school. They are both just really bad at managing time and are low energy. They have both admitted this.

Some people have really difficult kids and/or really useless husbands so they really are constantly busy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:People around here love to compete on how busy they are. Most of the time, I am not sure if it's real or just poor planning.
You are probably like me, a super-organized working mom who knows how to get stuff done efficiently and make time for yourself. Others are not like this.

+1

It's poor planning and lack of time management skills, combined with depression and anxiety (always so overwhelmed, at basically everything) - at least it is with a coworker that has an empty nest (kids grown and long gone), lives by herself, and can't get herself to work, at her regular job. I think this area takes its toll on people, OP. It gets better when you find your people, and also when the high anxiety types learn to take the proper medicine/s.

Generally, when people go on about how "busy" they are - I usually answer "i know what you mean!" until they stop. Get your sh*t together, people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Some people just don't like watching TV. I am not one of those people but honestly, I cannot tell you the last book I read. I don't dislike reading but at the end of the day, my brain just wants to zone out. I used to read on the Metro but am now WAH so rarely make the time to read. So a conversation about the latest books (that aren't made into movies/shows) would be useless to me.

Some people are really bad at time management. The two friends I have who complain about being so busy and 1. childless with a low-level job and 2. a SAHM with kids in school. They are both just really bad at managing time and are low energy. They have both admitted this.

Some people have really difficult kids and/or really useless husbands so they really are constantly busy.

+1

Mom here with older kids, and a couple of my friends (kids same age) have only recently admitted their jobs are VERY part time. Of course, these are the same people complaining about money. SMDH.

[Anonymous]

When I meet someone who is super busy, I assume they are not very good at managing their life. They are either overcommitted or addicted to urgency. Busy people are the least successful, in my experience.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When I meet someone who is super busy, I assume they are not very good at managing their life. They are either overcommitted or addicted to urgency. Busy people are the least successful, in my experience.

Idle hands are the devil's workshop

[Anonymous]

I agree that the busy olympics is tiresome and most of us have more time than we realize, it's just spent scrolling on our phones (which is fine! decompressing is fine) or because we put our kids in too many activities. That being said, it sounds like you may never experience it being one and done but the transition and impact on your time in moving to two kids is A LOT, in my experience. And like another poster said, as your kids get older and sleep less it just really does eat away from that time that you have right now with one 1 year old. It gets way easier in some ways, but from a time perspective I feel like I have less alone time than I did with one 1 year old for sure. My 4 year old doesn't fall asleep til fairly late on weekdays when he naps at prek. This is very common. We still put him to bed early but you can't fully relax when he's in there awake, sometimes calling for us (and no I can't just ignore him, he's 4 and it just doesn't work like that once they get older, we have boundaries and don't just keep going in but it just gets more complex).

Anyway, this is just to say it's good to not make assumptions about folks time. Being home all day with two kids sounds pretty exhausting to me now that I have two. Managing both their schedules which of course are not going to line up. That being said there is still no reason to whine about not having time to watch TV. I don't watch TV really but it's because i'm someone that goes to bed pretty early and don't love tv as much as some (spend plenty of time scrolling my phone mindlessly or on this site unfortunately)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m a mom who would not be able to talk about much in the way of TV or books. And not because I’m a martyr for busyness. I have hours of free time daily.

1) When my kid was an infant/toddler, I didn’t have the attention span to read novels. While I am back to reading, I often don’t read the book of the month or Oprah book or whatever and other people are not interested in talking about a book they haven’t or won’t read.
2) When the pandemic hit, I rewatched old series for comfort—Golden Girls, Cheers, Roseanne. Stuff like that. I didn’t have the capacity for new TV.
3) Too much TV agitates me, especially action or noisy shows. My kid watches TV in the afternoon, and I want nothing more than to turn it off and have something quiet to do when he’s in bed.
4) DH and I watch something together on Saturday nights, but usually way after it’s been out for a while and others have moved on to something else.
5) I have terrible memory for detail, so even if I finished a show or book I loved, I’d be the one saying, “the guy who wrote it was at Breadloaf I think? Or maybe won a Pushcart a while back? The guy with the glasses?” Just not a fun conversation to have.

So my default is, “oh, I’m so not up on books and TV!” Believe me, it’s not because I think I’m too busy or too highbrow.

Why do people on here blather on about their boring lives when it has nothing to do with the OP? The OP’s friends specifically said they are too busy for TV and books. No relation to whatever dull situation you’ve got going on.

1) Consider why you need to be so rude to a stranger online. Meditate on it. Something is lacking in your life and I hope you find it.
2) Learn to make inferences. My whole post was about how I would say *exactly* the same thing the OP said her friends were "going on and on" about (e.g., "wow, the last time I finished a new series was 3 years ago!"), even though the reason for that has NOTHING TO DO WITH BEING BUSY, the "busy Olympics," or whatever the OP thinks the friends are trying to do/say. My post was suggesting to OP that she consider whether they are reading too much into what the friends were saying.
3) What did you add to the discussion other than the thrill of judging someone you don't know. If you don't want to read me "blather on about [my] boring [life]" or read about "whatever dull situation [I've] got going on," then scroll on past. This is a discussion board, and you haven't added anything to the conversation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m a mom who would not be able to talk about much in the way of TV or books. And not because I’m a martyr for busyness. I have hours of free time daily.

1) When my kid was an infant/toddler, I didn’t have the attention span to read novels. While I am back to reading, I often don’t read the book of the month or Oprah book or whatever and other people are not interested in talking about a book they haven’t or won’t read.
2) When the pandemic hit, I rewatched old series for comfort—Golden Girls, Cheers, Roseanne. Stuff like that. I didn’t have the capacity for new TV.
3) Too much TV agitates me, especially action or noisy shows. My kid watches TV in the afternoon, and I want nothing more than to turn it off and have something quiet to do when he’s in bed.
4) DH and I watch something together on Saturday nights, but usually way after it’s been out for a while and others have moved on to something else.
5) I have terrible memory for detail, so even if I finished a show or book I loved, I’d be the one saying, “the guy who wrote it was at Breadloaf I think? Or maybe won a Pushcart a while back? The guy with the glasses?” Just not a fun conversation to have.

So my default is, “oh, I’m so not up on books and TV!” Believe me, it’s not because I think I’m too busy or too highbrow.

Why do people on here blather on about their boring lives when it has nothing to do with the OP? The OP’s friends specifically said they are too busy for TV and books. No relation to whatever dull situation you’ve got going on.

She wanted to namecheck Breadloaf and Pushcart so you’d know she’s literary. That whole post is a tired humblebrag about being too tired and busy for TV and is what OP is talking about only worse because “Pushcart.”

PP: I read Pushcart winners AND have no trouble carrying on a conversation about TV, even TV, I haven’t seen, because I’m not a tiresome bore. This is not about your personal media habits, it’s about having social skills. Try it!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some people just don't like watching TV. I am not one of those people but honestly, I cannot tell you the last book I read. I don't dislike reading but at the end of the day, my brain just wants to zone out. I used to read on the Metro but am now WAH so rarely make the time to read. So a conversation about the latest books (that aren't made into movies/shows) would be useless to me.

Some people are really bad at time management. The two friends I have who complain about being so busy and 1. childless with a low-level job and 2. a SAHM with kids in school. They are both just really bad at managing time and are low energy. They have both admitted this.

Some people have really difficult kids and/or really useless husbands so they really are constantly busy.

+1

Mom here with older kids, and a couple of my friends (kids same age) have only recently admitted their jobs are VERY part time. Of course, these are the same people complaining about money. SMDH.

Whoa, you seem weirdly and inappropriately invested in how many hours your friends work and their finances. Maybe instead of shaking your head you could move it up and away from other people’s business.

Imagine thinking it’s your job to decide how much someone else should be working. Just wow.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m a mom who would not be able to talk about much in the way of TV or books. And not because I’m a martyr for busyness. I have hours of free time daily.

1) When my kid was an infant/toddler, I didn’t have the attention span to read novels. While I am back to reading, I often don’t read the book of the month or Oprah book or whatever and other people are not interested in talking about a book they haven’t or won’t read.
2) When the pandemic hit, I rewatched old series for comfort—Golden Girls, Cheers, Roseanne. Stuff like that. I didn’t have the capacity for new TV.
3) Too much TV agitates me, especially action or noisy shows. My kid watches TV in the afternoon, and I want nothing more than to turn it off and have something quiet to do when he’s in bed.
4) DH and I watch something together on Saturday nights, but usually way after it’s been out for a while and others have moved on to something else.
5) I have terrible memory for detail, so even if I finished a show or book I loved, I’d be the one saying, “the guy who wrote it was at Breadloaf I think? Or maybe won a Pushcart a while back? The guy with the glasses?” Just not a fun conversation to have.

So my default is, “oh, I’m so not up on books and TV!” Believe me, it’s not because I think I’m too busy or too highbrow.

Why do people on here blather on about their boring lives when it has nothing to do with the OP? The OP’s friends specifically said they are too busy for TV and books. No relation to whatever dull situation you’ve got going on.

She wanted to namecheck Breadloaf and Pushcart so you’d know she’s literary. That whole post is a tired humblebrag about being too tired and busy for TV and is what OP is talking about only worse because “Pushcart.”

PP: I read Pushcart winners AND have no trouble carrying on a conversation about TV, even TV, I haven’t seen, because I’m not a tiresome bore. This is not about your personal media habits, it’s about having social skills. Try it!

Way to miss the point. Try having social skills yourself!

[Anonymous]

I feel like everyone takes EVERYTHING personally nowadays. If I talk about being busy (and I don't do this often but when I do) I am just genuinely busy! It isn't a competition, you asked me how I was, I'm busy!

I have three kids under 7, and in order to let them all be their own people, I try to let the older ones have an activity or two. This cuts into my time, and I resisted it for awhile because of that but I dunno, I want them to have some stuff. And there are times of year (like right now, actually) where I am honestly very overwhelmed by a particularly difficult time where we have a couple weekends of being over committed.

One thing that drives me insane is when people say "Oh I don't understand how do you do so much??? You're superwoman! You have it all so together! You watched all of love is blind?! How do you have time for that with everything you do?"

I get crap like that all the time, because I genuinely do not complain very much (because 1) what is the point and 2) everything I do is/was a choice I made). But you know what, I do it by putting one foot in front of the other every day just like everyone else. I frequently feel overwhelmed so it is certainly not something I do with ease, but if I complained about being overwhelmed I know it would offend a bunch of people. And honestly I also feel guilty a lot that I'm not doing enough because while we do a lot for one family, all my kids individually don't get to do as much as their peers.

A long way to say, everyone is walking a different path, I just worry about myself and try not to judge others and I wish everyone would do the same. I assume most parents are doing as much as they can without losing their sanity, and I fully understand that 'as much as they can without losing their sanity' is a bucket with dramatically different volume levels depending on the people involved. And how can you get mad at someone doing the best that they can do.

[Anonymous]

Like pps mentioned, they're probably scrolling social media even if too "busy" for books/TV.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Like pps mentioned, they're probably scrolling social media even if too "busy" for books/TV.

Well sure, some people have a quick few minutes to catch up on instagram in between kid chores and laundry, but not a whole chunk of time to watch Love is Blind.

[Anonymous]

I agree with almost everyone, ha. I agree that people can be sanctimonious about being busy. I agree that people have more idle time than they might realize, but it’s smaller chunks throughout the day rather than a longer period at the end of the evening. I agree that some people are more organized than others, and parents with more than one kid or who are working may be busier than others. All true.

Let’s just be kind to one another, assume good intentions when our friends vent, and not get sucked into competitiveness.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Like pps mentioned, they're probably scrolling social media even if too "busy" for books/TV.

Well sure, some people have a quick few minutes to catch up on instagram in between kid chores and laundry, but not a whole chunk of time to watch Love is Blind.

Ok here I'll throw in another weapon we throw at one another to respond to this. My husband does the laundry so I have time to watch LIB, why did you marry someone useless?

Does that accomplish anything? No. But neither did you by acting like people who manage to watch a crappy show don't do chores.