I’ve Been Busy

My absence from this blog for the past few weeks has been due to real-life school obligations and activities. Apologies aside, I have been busy. The type of busy that has more or less uprooted my daily routine, including my running and reading regimens. Needless to say, blogging has also fallen by the wayside.

Despite my recent busyness, I can’t say I’m particularly unhappy, or even the least bit stressed. My whirlwind weeks have given me little time to ponder, leaving me focused and goal oriented: truly living in the moment.

I recently spoke with a friend who has expressed feelings of stress, unhappiness, and depression, largely due to existential, “What am I doing with my life?”-type issues. I have received similar calls from many friends over the course of this past semester. All of them are currently attending college, and none of them have found it particularly taxing to this point: they’ve been relatively free to enjoy themselves at their own discretion. As such, they have created new friends and experienced new things: lived life. Bringing these facts to their attention, they were largely dismissive, casting their issues as “more fundamental,” more big picture.

Although I didn’t say this to her (or for that matter, any of them), I automatically assumed that she was bored. The novelty of college parties has largely worn off, and her lack of a daily grind has left her with too much time to ponder exactly what she’s doing with her life, taking classes hundreds of miles away from home.

Busyness is a fundamental aspect in the lives of successful people. Ben Casnocha has recently blogged about two individuals (James Ellroy and Cormac McCarthy) who have taken the notion of being busy to an obsessive level. As such, they have remained productive and creative, and their output has been consistently well-received.

When Daily Routines stopped posting, I was crushed. The blog was littered with tales of the world’s foremost artists crafting daily routines with zen-like proficiency: making the most out of every one of their waking hours. Although my daily routine isn’t quite as static as the featured icons, I took solace in their strict attention to a busy regimen, keeping their body and minds active in order to achieve their lofty goals.