The Virtue of Not Being Busy
This author is not a busy man at the moment, in fact a man with very very abundant amount of leisure. There is no getting around this fact. It is all the more ironic considering a mere few months ago, he was working six days a week, some twelve hours a day, getting so physically and emotionally sick from the experience that he had to quit his job, leave the country, take a massive pay cut, just to recover from the fiasco. A part of him is starting to miss the days where he had so little time for himself that savings started accumulating not particularly because he was being financially astute, but simply because there was no time to spend cash.
This author is also a massive massive workaholic, who derives a big chunk of personal joy from, well, doing what he himself perceives as "productive" work. The joy from being "productive," then, often overwhelms his own limits, getting himself into the above-hinted health troubles. In the past, he often had to force himself to say no, despite the anxiety of doing so, just to keep his non-work-related life in existence. The sudden loss of such self-inflicted pressures makes him feel a bit empty inside, so much so that he had to write this blog post to let the world know about it.
He does feel a continued sense of guilt while he is doing this, though. With little work at hand, and too much leisure (meaning he is all the time in the world to start burning the relatively little amount of cash he has in his hands now), he is panicking about finances, despite not even being close to bankruptcy in absolute terms. Thus begins a vain and half-hearted search for part-time freelance work, one which he feels necessary to fill that "productive emptiness" but at the same time hope will never actually materialize. He instead kind of hope everyday will be maximally social, just like those grad school days.
Right. Maybe the word "not being busy" should not automatically take up a negative connotation when blatantly put forward. Instead, it should be regarded as rather sad when our societies have set an ridiculously straightforward yet widely accepted equivalence of "being busy" and "being useful for human progress." The pressure to act busy whenever there is no work available, then, only serve to reduce efficiency. The employee does not go home on time so they seem diligent and hard-working, while the boss still does not get the needed output. This much the author has seen too much in working in Japan.
Indeed, it is the word "busy" that ought to conjure up images of unnecessary social distance among people. Whenever a person tells another that s/he is busy, it gives the impression that his/her time is too valuable, too important to be wasted on conversing with others, just for the heck of it. In professing to be "busy," the person decided to sacrifice human relations for "productivity" that would supposed help his/her self-worth, career, or even to establish his/her place in the world. One gains the comfort of being happily productive, at least so one thinks, at the expense of interaction with loved ones...or finding those loved ones.
"Not being busy," therefore, should not be defined as lazy per se. Rather, it depends on what the person occupies himself with during those "not busy" times. The author is sick of being busy, often against his own will, in previous jobs and, most likely, jobs he will have in the future. Just as he did during his various job transitions period after jobs in Japan and Korea, down time is not simply for killing and wasting, it is for contemplating who he is, who he wants to be, and who he will be. Such deep thinking is simply not possible when "busy-ness" bogs him down with endless amount of "productive" work.
Here in Taiwan, the same rule should definitely apply. The author will only be here for a short period of time, that much is certain. With this limited time, he must concentrate on things that can only be done here in Taiwan. That entails not just traveling around the island whenever he has the time, but also about meeting as many people as possible in these few months of less-than-fully-occupied employment. It is about reflecting about love in a park somewhere, and it is about participating in some of the best rooftop drinking parties with a group of complete strangers, who in turn may become the best of new friends.
And most of all, it is about being philosophical and thinking beyond the immediate needs. There may be lost opportunities for cashing in on random side-jobs. There may be periods of anxieties dealing with complete boredom. But all of these pale in comparisons with the sheer possibilities of complete freedom that come with the very fact that there is very little "busy work" piled up. At the risk of justifying his own refusal to do more than the bare minimum to survive, the author will put his stamp of approval on this sort of bum-like lifestyle. The virtue of "not being busy" can only be truly understood when all the social expectations of being busy are thrown out the window.
This author is also a massive massive workaholic, who derives a big chunk of personal joy from, well, doing what he himself perceives as "productive" work. The joy from being "productive," then, often overwhelms his own limits, getting himself into the above-hinted health troubles. In the past, he often had to force himself to say no, despite the anxiety of doing so, just to keep his non-work-related life in existence. The sudden loss of such self-inflicted pressures makes him feel a bit empty inside, so much so that he had to write this blog post to let the world know about it.
He does feel a continued sense of guilt while he is doing this, though. With little work at hand, and too much leisure (meaning he is all the time in the world to start burning the relatively little amount of cash he has in his hands now), he is panicking about finances, despite not even being close to bankruptcy in absolute terms. Thus begins a vain and half-hearted search for part-time freelance work, one which he feels necessary to fill that "productive emptiness" but at the same time hope will never actually materialize. He instead kind of hope everyday will be maximally social, just like those grad school days.
Right. Maybe the word "not being busy" should not automatically take up a negative connotation when blatantly put forward. Instead, it should be regarded as rather sad when our societies have set an ridiculously straightforward yet widely accepted equivalence of "being busy" and "being useful for human progress." The pressure to act busy whenever there is no work available, then, only serve to reduce efficiency. The employee does not go home on time so they seem diligent and hard-working, while the boss still does not get the needed output. This much the author has seen too much in working in Japan.
Indeed, it is the word "busy" that ought to conjure up images of unnecessary social distance among people. Whenever a person tells another that s/he is busy, it gives the impression that his/her time is too valuable, too important to be wasted on conversing with others, just for the heck of it. In professing to be "busy," the person decided to sacrifice human relations for "productivity" that would supposed help his/her self-worth, career, or even to establish his/her place in the world. One gains the comfort of being happily productive, at least so one thinks, at the expense of interaction with loved ones...or finding those loved ones.
"Not being busy," therefore, should not be defined as lazy per se. Rather, it depends on what the person occupies himself with during those "not busy" times. The author is sick of being busy, often against his own will, in previous jobs and, most likely, jobs he will have in the future. Just as he did during his various job transitions period after jobs in Japan and Korea, down time is not simply for killing and wasting, it is for contemplating who he is, who he wants to be, and who he will be. Such deep thinking is simply not possible when "busy-ness" bogs him down with endless amount of "productive" work.
Here in Taiwan, the same rule should definitely apply. The author will only be here for a short period of time, that much is certain. With this limited time, he must concentrate on things that can only be done here in Taiwan. That entails not just traveling around the island whenever he has the time, but also about meeting as many people as possible in these few months of less-than-fully-occupied employment. It is about reflecting about love in a park somewhere, and it is about participating in some of the best rooftop drinking parties with a group of complete strangers, who in turn may become the best of new friends.
And most of all, it is about being philosophical and thinking beyond the immediate needs. There may be lost opportunities for cashing in on random side-jobs. There may be periods of anxieties dealing with complete boredom. But all of these pale in comparisons with the sheer possibilities of complete freedom that come with the very fact that there is very little "busy work" piled up. At the risk of justifying his own refusal to do more than the bare minimum to survive, the author will put his stamp of approval on this sort of bum-like lifestyle. The virtue of "not being busy" can only be truly understood when all the social expectations of being busy are thrown out the window.
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