Whew...I've Been A Busy Guy For A Long Time Now

In the spirit of re-use and recycle, this this is a column that was written about 14 years ago, as part of my Couch Potato Chronicles series, which I wrote from 1998 to 2009.   
Whenever I read these columns, I realize that the more things change the more they stay the same. The tools we have at our disposal are different today, but the sensibility is virtually the same. Hope you're not to busy to read this.
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Late February. It feels more like early April out there. The temperature is up to around 10 degrees. This morning, I look out my window and see that the insidious Manitoba Maples which infest my back yard are shrouded in fog. And last night I was lulled to sleep by the steady pounding of rain on the roof.
Like many people who live is southern Ontario, the rain always seems to get me down somewhat. I know that if I had to live in some place like Vancouver or Seattle where rainy days are more common than sunny ones, I would surely become suicidal.
But there’s something about the rain these days that suits my mood. Maybe it has to do with the so-called new Millennium and the efforts I keep seeing all around me of people, companies, institutions and governments struggling to define just what it’s supposed to mean to them.
There’s so much pressure on us all to define ourselves these days. The recent lull in my advertising business, (which, incidentally is shared by a lot of the other advertising people I talk to regularly), has given me some time to think about that.
Being a hyperactive soul, whenever business gets slow, I immediately switch into self-promotion mode. During the course of this intense flurry of activity, it suddenly occurred to me that maybe I’m just trying too hard to fit into the New Millennium. That maybe I’ve become hooked on the adrenaline rush that comes from always having to have something to do.  And that when I’m given the time to sit back and take a hard earned and (arguably) well deserved break, I tend, like many people, to sacrifice it to the addiction.
I’m not sure if writing about it is the cure, but it certainly helps to define the problem and maybe that’s a beginning .
Busy Is The Ultimate Addiction
A lot of us, especially those of us in the persuasion business, tend to spend days, even weeks on end feeding our addiction.We pull more all nighters than our constitutions will safely allow. We work our butts off in the hope of finding some sort of ... let’s call it justification, purpose, reason to get up in the morning.I’m busier when I’m not ‘busy’ than when I’m swamped with billable work. I’m busy updating my CVs, which are really my primary selling tools, busy deciding on the most effective ways to get them out to the people I need to reach, busy building databases and mailing lists, busy chatting with people on the phone about upcoming projects, busy, busy, busy.
And it’s not just me. I look at my wife. Between being busy keeping the house clean and impeccably neat (except for her craft corner, down in the family room), busy running her miniature group (one of the largest in Canada), busy working on about a dozen miniature projects at a time and doing the books for the company, she’s even busier than me.
My son is busy managing a video game store, busy getting his internet chops together, busy being the ideal party host and busy perfecting the art of the ski weekend.
My daughter is busy with school, busy managing her career as an actress and a social schedule that would put most Connecticut debutantes to shame.
Even the Lucy the dog is a hyperactive Kerry Blue Terrier. She’s busy all day staring down squirrels in the back yard and busy chasing them up trees and telephone poles on her walks.
My wife, my son and I are all busy, working on superfast computers. We are in the process of upgrading to high speed internet access, so we can be busier on the world wide web. We have two VCRs so that we can tape everything we watch and fast forward through the commercials because we’re even busy TV watchers. We have caller ID, call waiting and call display on all our phones. Yep...we’re busy there too.
I don’t see a light at the end of the tunnel here. But then maybe I don’t want to. Maybe I’m just condemned to be terminally busy. Maybe we all are. Just look at how busy you are.
I’m a big believer in the ‘Change Is As Good As A Rest’ theory, (The busy guy’s credo).  So I have (recently) managed to shuffle things around so that I can usually take most of Friday off. Which of course means nothing more than switching addictions from advertising to the ersatz journalism and highly subjective editorializing that this column purports to be.
Too Busy For A Full Review…so
Last night the wife and I, busy as we are, went to see “The Cider House Rules”. In a nutshell, it’s one of the best Hollywood films I’ve seen since “The Prince of Tides”.  John Irving wrote the screenplay of his own book, which means it’s delightfully literate. The casting is brilliant, the acting is superlative across the board, the story is compelling and the pace is slow and easy.
Go see it, if you’re not too busy, that is.
POST SCRIPT: I’m still hopelessly addicted to being busy. It just expresses itself in different ways these days. This blog, for example is one of three or four posts I publish every week. I am constantly developing new business and cultivating new partnerships. And while a lot of people might argue that it could be time to start thinking about slowing down a bit, my response has always been. “Hey, it’s not like this is a job or anything…it’s not what I do…it’s what I am.”
I know a lot of you feel the same way…so get back to work. It’s a busy world and it stays that way because of us.

I'm Jim Murray and my company is called Onwords & Upwords.I am a communications professional, primarily a strategist & writer. I work with B to B clients, large and small, graphic designers, art directors and marketing consultants to create hard working strategically focused communications in all on & offline media. I am also a lyricist and a prolific blogger who likes to provoke thought and wake up the comatose.
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