Issue 16: The Busiest Bee

“Time is what we want most but what we use worst.” – William Penn

I listen to podcasts at double speed. I will often do this while running errands or taking the dog out. I get to work early and eat lunch at my desk. I lead multiple things with our church each week. We bought a house in the last couple of months. I started this newsletter this year. I meet with a few guys early on Thursday mornings every week. We discuss life. This week, I lamented that I feel like I’ve wasted a lot of time this year. I feel like I haven’t accomplished much.

Yet, when people ask me how I’m doing, I often respond, “Busy.”

I am both too busy and wasting time. I like being busy, or at least thought of as busy. I want to seem important, that my time is so coveted. I used to work 12 hour days pressure washing. During that time, I never said I was “busy”, I was tired. Now I sit at my silly little desk sending silly little emails and go play my silly little soccer games once a week. I say, “Busy, but all good stuff”. How busy we are seems to be a type of social status. You’re more important if you are more busy. You are needed. Most of the stuff I spend my time on, I’m not needed. I do my best, but things wouldn’t crumble without me.

I typed and deleted that sentence multiple times. I want to be needed. I learned a lot during COVID. I lost two jobs during that time. After losing my second job, I told myself I would make myself “indispensable” at my next job. My goal was, if cuts had to be made, they would look at me and think, “we can’t lose him.” That’s not a bad way to be. Trying your best is the right thing to do. I also learned that so much of my value isn’t in what I produce. In fact, it was during this time of adding no value to the workplace that I added the most to my life. My view of myself had to change for me to grow in more important ways.

I became more humble. I saw how selfless, kind, understanding, and gentle my now wife was during that time and it made me strive to be a better man. It caused me to want to be those things for her. While I wasn’t being a good producer of anything, I became more of the person I wanted to be for my wife, which is infinitely more valuable than any job I could work.

TED Talks, LikedIn posts, and even some sermons will tell you all the time you spend watching Netflix is wasted time. You could be doing so much more with that time. That said, one of my favorite things in the world is to spend an evening watching a show with my wife. Laughing together, talking about the show, discussing our theories, or just sitting quietly in each other’s presence. We get closer. We enjoy the time wasted. To me, that doesn’t actually feel like a waste of time at all. It would be more wasteful for me to learn French, or bake my own bread, or fine tune that spreadsheet, than to become closer with Niki.

“Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.” – Marthe Troly-Curtin

Last weekend, Niki went to the Taylor Swift concert with a friend. I said I would stay home and pack for our upcoming move. Then, my buddy texted me and asked if I’d like to go to a Braves game. I haven’t been the best friend lately. I haven’t been a jerk or anything, but I just haven’t been around as much. I’ve been busy, remember? The “right thing to do” would have been to pack, I went to the game. We laughed hard, we enjoyed the game, we got on the jumbotron twice.

I’m sure there is a chance that one day I will be on my deathbed wishing I had worked a little harder, saved a little more, or accomplished a few more accolades. More likely, I will wish I’d called in “sick” a few more times to ditch work and spend the day with Niki, caught a couple more games with the guys, or even taken our future children on a trip that may not have been in the budget.