{"id":632,"date":"2014-03-07T20:15:26","date_gmt":"2014-03-07T20:15:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/?p=632"},"modified":"2014-03-07T20:15:26","modified_gmt":"2014-03-07T20:15:26","slug":"detox-the-stress-learning-to-cope-without-being-busy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/2014\/03\/07\/detox-the-stress-learning-to-cope-without-being-busy\/","title":{"rendered":"Detox the Stress: Learning to cope without being busy"},"content":{"rendered":"

By AUDREY JENKINS<\/strong> –\u00a0STAFF WRITER<\/em><\/p>\n

You\u2019re busy.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t bother denying it, because we all know it\u2019s true. I can taste it in the Cowan coffee you gulp down like water to stay awake during your afternoon classes.<\/p>\n

I can see it in the bags under your eyes as you scribble yet another club meeting into your already full planner. I can smell it in the nervous air that surrounds you as you pull out a pencil to take the quiz you didn\u2019t have time to study for yesterday.<\/p>\n

I can feel it in the way you rush by me with little more than a half-smile and a \u201chowareyoufinethankshaveaniceday.\u201d<\/p>\n

And of course, I can hear it in your voice when you tell me that you\u2019d love to, but you\u2019re too busy.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re not sleeping enough. You\u2019re not exercising enough. You might be eating enough, but the jury is still out as to whether Taco Bell and Ramen should be counted as real food. You are stressed and haggard and tired. You are busy. Super freaking busy.<\/p>\n

But do you want to know the sickest thing about all of this?<\/p>\n

You kinda like it.<\/p>\n

Have you ever heard a conversation that goes like this?<\/p>\n

\u201cHey, how are you?\u201d \u201cGood! I only got three hours of sleep last night because I have three tests today and I had practice until eight, but it\u2019s all good!\u201d \u201cOMG, I know! I only got 2.5 hours of sleep last night because I have three tests today and a presentation and I was in meetings until nine, but hey, sleep when you\u2019re dead, ya know?\u201d<\/p>\n

This, my friends, is called the art of \u201cout-busying.\u201d As far as I can tell, out-busying is simply one-upping someone else when they tell you how busy they are.<\/p>\n

You got three hours of sleep? I got two. You took three tests? I took three and a half. You haven\u2019t showered in two days? Gurl, I haven\u2019t showered all month.<\/p>\n

Yes, it sounds a bit ridiculous, but we\u2019ve all done it or at least seen someone else do it. Or maybe you never talk about your busy-ness, but deep inside, you are proud of your packed schedule. Either way, it\u2019s time for this mentality to end.<\/p>\n

Somewhere along the lines, our culture started glorifying busy-ness. If you\u2019re not busy, you must be doing something wrong. If your planner isn\u2019t full, you\u2019re probably lazy, unintelligent, or pathetically under-ambitious.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t you know how bad the job market is? Don\u2019t you realize that we go to a small liberal arts school in Kentucky and that you best be filling up your resume or risk facing eternal unemployment and certain doom?<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not faulting you for wanting to work hard to achieve your goals. It\u2019s true that the job market is not the best, especially for the liberal arts majors of the world.<\/p>\n

Honestly, Centre students, I truly and deeply admire you for your work ethic and your ambitions. They set you apart from the apathetics, the complacents, and the \u201cI just want to party and have funs\u201d of this world.<\/p>\n

But there is a difference between hard work and busy-ness. Hard work is when you devote yourself to those things that you are passionate about. Hard work is when you give yourself to the people and places and ideas and projects and things that you care truly and deeply for.<\/p>\n

Busy-ness, on the other hand, is when you fill your planner because you think a full day will fill your empty soul. When you strip everything else away, we are all just pilgrims on this crazy, random, exciting, terrifying, beautiful journey called life.<\/p>\n

We are the dreamers and the believers. We want to use our passions to change the world. We want to leave our mark on the people and places we encounter. We want to fall in love and find our niche and be happy and healthy and successful, whatever that means.<\/p>\n

Yet we are scared that we won\u2019t ever reach these goals. We are secretly terrified that maybe we aren\u2019t talented or intelligent enough to be the people we want to be or do the things we want to do. We are scared that we aren\u2019t doing enough and that maybe our entire existence is in some way worthless.<\/p>\n

So instead of just giving up and flopping around on the floor (we\u2019re too young and idealistic to do that yet), we fill our days with stuff. Surely if my entire day is booked from 8 a.m to 8 p.m. I can\u2019t be worthless?<\/p>\n

Surely if I have enough internships and club memberships and team captainships under my belt I must be doing something right? Wrong. Dead wrong.<\/p>\n

Please don\u2019t think that I\u2019m accusing you of anything right now. We are all victims to this mentality. We weren\u2019t born with a planner and pen in our hands, scheduling meetings and trying to find a way to intravenously inject caffeine into our systems. It\u2019s a culturally circulated idea that we have fallen prey to, but I think we can fight it.<\/p>\n

So I know this is going to sound cheesy, but take some time off. Stop glorifying busy-ness. Stop trying to out-busy others.<\/p>\n

I understand that it feels good to be busy sometimes. You feel important when you\u2019re busy and that feels good. But it doesn\u2019t feel good when you\u2019re pulling consecutive all-nighters or waking up to 60 emails or falling asleep at your desk.<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t feel good to be too busy to call mom or have life chats with your roommate.<\/p>\n

Take time to be with your friends. Some of the best people I have ever met go to this school and I can\u2019t imagine better people to become lifelong friends with. Take time to be by yourself. The best ideas I have ever had have come to me while I was running, playing the piano, or in the shower \u2014 all solitary activities for me. Sometimes you just need to take time to reflect. To be present in the moment. To be inspired.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not saying that you should become a sloth. Or even an inspired sloth.<\/p>\n

Centre students work hard and do awesome things. You are the present and the future of our world and that\u2019s not a task to be taken lightly. But if you\u2019re ever feeling empty or lost or confused or alone, please don\u2019t fill that void with more work just because you\u2019re seeking fulfillment.<\/p>\n

Work hard, but do it because you want to, not because you feel like you have to in order to be \u201csuccessful.\u201d The future can be scary, but you are capable and it\u2019s time to start believing it.<\/p>\n

If the world was your oyster and your possibilities were infinite and limitless and you could have it all, what would you choose to do with your time? Would you be a singer? Play soccer? Blow glass? Go fishing? Hang out with your best friends? Read about neuroscience? Watch documentaries? Knit in an armchair?<\/p>\n

Whatever those things are for you, do them. Even as you are working hard in school or at your job, make time for the things that you love, because they will keep you sane. Even better, they will make you happy \u2014 far happier than just being busy will.<\/p>\n

And if none has convinced you yet, just think of it this way: no one ever laid on their deathbed and said, \u201cI wish I\u2019d been busier.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By AUDREY JENKINS –\u00a0STAFF WRITER You\u2019re busy. Don\u2019t bother denying it, because we all know it\u2019s true. I can taste it in the Cowan coffee you gulp down like water to stay awake during your afternoon classes. I can see it in the bags under your eyes as you scribble yet another club meeting into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}