Someone asked me once, gently, what i actually did for fun. I genuinely could not answer. Not because my life was empty. Because it was so full of obligation that fun had quietly stopped existing as a category at all.
For most of my twenties, busy was my answer to everything. How are you. Busy. How was your week. Busy, but good. Said with a tone that made it sound like an achievement rather than what it actually was, which was avoidance with a very convincing schedule attached to it.
If i am honest, stillness scared me more than exhaustion did. An empty evening meant i had to sit with whatever i had been outrunning all week. Easier to fill the gap. Easier to say yes to one more thing. Easier to stay in motion than to ask myself why slowing down felt like danger.
Got properly sick one year, forced into bed for nearly two weeks with nothing to do but exist. And without the schedule propping everything up, i did not fully recognise who i was. That scared me more than the illness itself.
I think a lot of people are running on that same fuel without naming it. Somewhere along the way busy became a stand in for valuable, for important, for worthy of other people's attention. Slowing down starts to feel like falling behind, even when your entire body is quietly begging for rest.
Not all busyness is hollow. Some of it is real work that genuinely matters to you. But it is worth asking honestly sometimes whether you are busy because the moment demands it, or because stillness feels too uncomfortable to sit inside.
I am learning, slower than i would like, that an empty afternoon does not erase my worth. That rest is not a gap in productivity, it is just part of being human. That i do not have to constantly prove i matter through how full my calendar looks to other people.
Busy was never the same thing as important. It just wore the costume convincingly for a long time.
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