busy busy busy

Its the standard response these days right?
How are you? Oh, you know, busy as always.
Hey, haven't seen you for ages. Yeah I know...been really busy.
What are you doing this weekend - want to catch up? Erm...not sure, I'm pretty busy. Can I let you know?

Somehow we see using the 'busy' excuse as kinder.  More polite than saying ''actually right now life is pretty rough for me''.  Or ''I've been lying low, not feeling that sociable''Or, ''sorry, you are not actually a priority for me right now''.

Of course its nicer - and the thing with the 'busy'' excuse is that not only does it engender some sympathy, but it's pretty hard to argue with.  To say that you are disappointed with not hearing from someone when they have just told you how busy they are would seem churlish in the extreme. Probably a bit needy even.  Far better to nod slowly and empathise with how BUSY life is these days, and how DIFFICULT it can be to make the time to do the things you really want to.

Going by the amount of traffic that crawls over Facebook, Pinterest and the like, I'm guessing that most of us aren't anywhere near as busy as we like to make out.  Sure, even taking half an hour out of the day to blog says I'M not that busy, doesn't it?  But busy sounds important, urgent, focused - rather than the sometimes more truthful version - bored, needing distraction, unmotivated.

Sometimes we really are busy. That's modern life. Families, meetings, work commitments, ridiculous amounts of time commuting to work or ferrying kids here and there.  Boring stuff like lawn mowing and cleaning. Good stuff like sport and social events.  Challenging jobs.  Community commitments. None are bad things.

But yep,I'll admit it. I've used the busy reason plenty myself.  Busy sounds a whole lot better than any other excuse I might be able to come up with - and its a lot less painless for the excuse-recipient than the truth could well be. Seems like its just another way we are able to mask what is really going on in our lives though doesn't it?

How often have you said that in the past week? Month?

Were you actually busy?