The theme of modern life: "Everyone's always so busy!!" Is there anyone like me who is NOT busy?

Our local NPR station has a promo advertising their quickie morning news podcast. It goes something like, “Your mornings are soooo busy! It’s time you just don’t have! You’ve got to get up, shower, decide what to wear, get breakfast, milk the cows, and plow the back 40–!” (I made up the last part.)

I hear that and think, I’m retired. I live by myself. I have no kids, no siblings, no parents, no significant other, no job, not even a volunteer job. I live in a darling, rented house with a postage-stamp-sized yard. I have no debt at all, an adequate income, enough money in the bank, reasonably good health (knock on wood-- breast cancer 4 years ago but now NED*), in short, NO obligations of any sort to a job, an institution, or to any other persons, living or dead. I have two cats and a dog–those are my only dependents, and they spend most of the day sleeping. I can pretty much do whatever I want every day all day with no one to answer to or explain myself to.

A year ago, a dear friend died, someone whose health was steadily declining and whom I saw often and often took to the doctor. A few months before he died, my mother died. I had moved her here from California to assisted living and I saw her twice a week and did her laundry every week. Those two people were the last two human beings with whom I had any personal ties of obligation. I had done freelance work (when did that become The Gig Economy??) for dozens of clients over a period of 40-ish years, but my last client retired about the time my mom died, and I don’t feel moved to look for more work. So no more professional obligations either.

My friends all have families, including some or all of the following: spouses, children, grandchildren, siblings, in-laws, and a couple of my girlfriends still have their moms (in their late 90s). Most of my contemporaries are enmeshed in tight webs of obligation, with aging/chronically ill family members, grown children who are financially dependent on them (still), grandchildren doing poorly in school due to various problems, massive debt from second mortgages or old and/or current college loans. I’m not saying I would trade places with any of them; I definitely would not, but it is strange and atypical in this Busy Era to be so unencumbered.

Just curious. Is anyone else here footloose and fancy-free like me? How’s that working for you? (Give your age, if it seems relevant.)

  • NED = “No evidence of disease.” I prefer this term to the commonly used “cancer-free,” which is something no one can count on, especially if you’ve ever been diagnosed with cancer… and frankly, even if you have not.

I long for a life like yours. It will never happen. Enjoy your rare position in life, and have a cuppa for me and all the others in purgatory. (edit) I’m nearly 67 for what it’s worth.

No, definitely not. But good for your for recognizing your situation. I know some people who have no spouse, no kids, no pets, no mortgage and yet they still manage to find things that stress them out.

Me, I’m pretty busy with work and family and house, but not at an unhealthy level. And yet, I’d be lying if I said I never daydreamed of being completely untethered, maybe just for a couple months.

I work full time but I am not busy outside of my work hours. But that is because I have no children, no significant other, and no social obligations.

I can’t dilly-dally in the mornings, though. I have an hour to get dressed and all that jazz, because I walk to work and I don’t want to be late.

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If you’ve got time to waste on the SDMB, you’re NOT “busy”.

I’m obliged to limit my busyness because I suffer from poorly controlled depression, stress and fatigue. I live below the poverty line but manage to get by on various forms of assistance I qualify for, the income from a part-time job, and the fact that I live in a paid-off home.

I had time to read your OP, that should say something:)
Since I’ve sent my Baby to university my days are mostly full of junk I want to do. I have too much house nowadays. I’m not leaving it tho’, it pretty much runs itself. Mr.Wrekker stays gone alot for his hunting and fishing pursuits. We have acreage. I don’t concern myself too much with it, except my little garden. Pets are my biggest time consumer.
Lots of anxiety and fear consume me some days. I tend to hole up here away from the world. I have to work to make myself get out. I’m more successful some days than others.
I’m not unhappy just a little worried.

I think there are a lot of people who really aren’t all that busy. I also think that “being busy” is a socially-acceptable excuse for not doing something you really don’t want to do (“Oh, I’d love to chair that committee, but I can’t – I’m just too busy.”)

It’s also used as an excuse for not doing something the person thinks they should do, instead doing something else they want to do. I noticed this many years, when I’d make mention of a book I had just read, and someone would say, “I’d love to be able to just sit and read a book, but I’m too busy.” Listening to their conversation, it often became obvious that they weren’t too busy to spend four hours watching the Bears lose to the Packers, or to sit in a boat all afternoon and drink beer and call it fishing, or to spend most of a day searching the stores for the perfect pair of black sandals.

It’s the child-having that eats up all the spare time. People who don’t have children are as busy or free as they choose to be. Turns out that, given a choice, people prefer not to be insanely busy.

It’s a blessing not to be busy; if that’s what you’ve chosen, more power to you.

Now I’m retired, a busy day for me would be practically a vacation when I was working. I can tell I’m not busy two ways. First, scheduling appointments is easy. Second, my backlog of unread books is going down. Also, Sunday night is not a night of dread when I consider all the stuff I was going to do on the weekend that didn’t get done.

I was plenty busy before I retired, so I know the difference.

I’m not busy, because I chose to lead my life with that as one of my goals.

I live in a low maintenance apartment. I have no kids. I prefer slow paced jobs that have down time. As a result I’d say in the average day, I am only truly ‘busy’ about 5 hours a day even on a workday. My weekends are free. Who wants to be rushed?

Thats one of my goals (minus the depression).

Pay off a home (I’d prefer a condo myself though) and live off a mix of interest from savings and part time work. For health care I could get medicaid or a heavily subsidized ACA plan.

I guess I’ll hold my hand up for the minority view.

First, let me first say that I am happy that you seem to have found your happiness. Kudos.

But, I will follow that up by saying that, to me, part of the human experience is… experiencing other humans. Working, certainly. Having a family, hopefully. Volunteering to give of your skills to people who could use your help. Enjoying fellowship with friends. These are all enjoyable, important things (to me). An unhurried life without those things would not be enjoyable to me.

This is not too say that I am one of those ‘leader of industry’ types who is writing books, leading companies, building houses and travelling around the world. I have a decent job. I have a small family. I volunteer weekly, etc. Nothing extreme. I am not stressed in the least, but nor am I bored.

I’m engaged, just not obligated. No one depends on me. As for happiness, I have times when I’m ambivalent, and times when I’m euphoric. I probably touch on happiness as I slide between those two poles.

Being “busy” is a status symbol now. Being able to brag about your multiple hobbies, side hustles, and social activities on social media is a way to broadcast to others your importance and value in the world. So an ad that “reminds” you of how busy you are is just “reminding” you how cool and important you are, to have so many things going on. (The cynic in me also thinks that The Man wants us to associate “busy” with “cool and important”. Because The Man wants us to be happy little work-bots.)

Every time we celebrate someone’s retirement at work, inevitably someone asks the soon-to-be retiree about their plans for staying busy. Just hearing that question stresses me out because I have NO idea what my response will be when/if my time comes. I don’t see myself traveling the world or putting in a lot of serious time volunteering somewhere. I like yardwork, but don’t see myself being a “garden lady”. All I can see me doing, except posting on the internet, is hiking all over creation. Now I like this image of myself, but will I really have the guts to tell people that’s what I plan on doing to “stay busy”? No. I will probably make some shit up about me traveling exotic places and volunteering somewhere…which will no doubt cause a younger coworker to tense up and start wondering what they are going to do when they retire.

Busted, 'cuz I do spend some time on the SDMB (though not nearly as much as I used to).

But despite living alone and being semi-retired (I just do consulting work; the workload varies but virtually never goes over 10 hrs/wk), I feel super-busy. I am extremely active on the board of a local cultural organization, I teach gamelan classes twice a week, I have a boyfriend who lives nearly an hour’s drive away, I don’t have a dishwasher (which I have concluded is a real time-sink, since I cook fairly complex dishes all the time and create a gazillion dishes I need to wash), my time management skills suck, I like a neat house but I mess it up all the time so I then have to straighten it, and my cat(s) always manage to be in some situation - right now I’m regularly medicating an overly aggressive cat I stupidly adopted, and before that I was spending prodigious amounts of time fighting fleas via baths and daily cleaning every single rug in the house.

TLDR - I am super busy, but wouldn’t be if I managed my time/set my priorities a little better.

I often think of myself as “rich in time.” I have a 6 minute commute to and from a job that requires 8.5 hours a day, with zero overtime. My job does not require that I be available off hours or weekends.

I’m 58. My kids are grown and out of the house. I get generous vacation time.

I get to work before 7 a.m., and am home by 3:40 - except for the days I stop off on the way home to swim. On those days, I’m home by 4:30. My wife works pt-time, so she does most of the business of running the household during the day. We have several hours in the evening to do whatever we want. I play golf, I play a ton of music, I go on long bike rides, I garden, and I read A LOT. I take naps on the weekends, and get my solid 8 hours of sleep each night.

It is a good place to be. But it didn’t happen accidentally, and it didn’t happen by following what everyone told me I OUGHT to be doing/wanting.

I get the impression a lot of people voluntarily accept more and more commitments, and use technology which supposedly enhances efficiency, but actually ends up increasing their commitments. And then they bitch about not having enough time.

I winced when I read that. Oh please, don’t fib about this (I hope you’re joking). One of my friends used to reply to the “what do you plan to do?” question by saying, “Whatever I damn well please.” Please don’t make stuff up just because of what people might think. (You were joking, right?)

You’re right - they ask that. Here’s what I did. Before I retired I walked through the house making a list of all the stuff I never got to because I was working all day. It ranged from trivial stuff like cleaning out a closet to finishing a novel. I made a spreadsheet from my list. Then, when they asked me what I was going to do, I told them about the spreadsheet. It shut them right up.
You don’t have to follow the spreadsheet, but it seemed like something they understood.
Getting to 50K posts here wasn’t something I told them about, though.

It actually won’t be fibbing to say “I’m going to do a little traveling and a little volunteering and some hiking”, because I most certainly will do those things once I stop working full time. I just won’t be doing them enough to stay “busy” with them, except for maybe the last one.

Someone wise once told me that I don’t owe anyone the unvarnished truth, especially if sharing it makes me uncomfortable. I can let someone form their own mental picture just by giving them a general outline. I’m not ashamed that I’m not the busiest person in the world, but I also don’t have to give people a reason to share their negative commentary. I can handle an artful exaggeration of the truth. I am really bad at deflecting general shittery.

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN, YOU’RE GOING TO GO HKING IN THE WILDERNESS!!! THAT AIN’T NO GOOD RETIREMENT!!! YOU’RE GOING TO BE THAT OLD LADY WHO FALLS OFF THE CLIFF!!! WE’RE GOING TO CALL YOU GRIZZLY ADAMS!!!”