I'm one of those busy people. I'm fine with being busy--I come from busy stock (my parents are always up to something), but sometimes I get the sense that being "busy" is a synonym for being some sort of drone or workaholic. It's partially because of this New York Times piece in 2012 which implied that busy people are also too busy to stop and smell the roses, and also sometimes, when I tell someone what we got up to the last weekend, I hear "You're so busy!" in a tone I feel weirdly compelled to defend. Here are the reasons why I/we are so busy (when I'm not at work or sleeping):

I have a busy kid
This may be a pipe dream but I have a fantasy that someday, Paul will watch a movie with us and sit still for a half an hour to a few hours. This doesn't happen yet, however, unless he's sick. Try as we might--and we've tried--the kid doesn't sit still unless he's forcibly strapped down (in a carseat or stroller.) He's not into TV for more than a few minutes and we're trying, still, not to let him watch too much Youtube (full of so many entertaining truck videos), and we haven't let him play with a smartphone or tablet yet. So, why don't I sit down really prior to 8 PM? Because of the small, busy person. We gotta go out and do stuff to make the day go by. I mean, I think it's fun stuff--this weekend we went to two kiddie classes, the beach and the aquarium--so to me, this type of "busy"-ness is fun and enriching for Paul, which is enjoyable for us to watch and experience as well.  

Our busy kid is still accident prone, and lives in a small house
Another pipe dream: that in our new house, Paul will go down to the playroom and entertain himself safely and without too much destruction for awhile while we do our own thing. However, at this time, we a.) don't have room for him to run wild in his own area and b.) he's still at the age where slammed fingers, swallowed pennies, poked electrical sockets are all real dangers that we have to be on guard and on watch for.

I like to/need to exercise
I don't exercise due to some desperate compulsion where I feel like a slave to the treadmill, that if I don't exercise, I'll be fat forever so I just need to try as hard as I can to keep up with the norms unfairly placed upon me. I actually like the feeling of having exercised (if not the exercise itself)--it's a stress reliever, it's a pride-booster, it's good for my metabolism and my digestion. And, if Paul learns that physical exercise is a good thing from all this, that's great, too. In a perfect world, I would have time for both couch time and exercise time but unless I'm unwell or extra-exhausted, if I have to pick between a half hour on the couch and a half hour on the lake path, most of the time I know I'd feel better if I went with the latter.

I have friends who I like to see
I have friends and frequently I like to see them outside the house because a.) getting out and seeing new places is fun b.) hosting people can be a drag c.) I need to see my friends for my sanity. I've successfully been able to 'consolidate' a couple of handfuls of friends into groups I can see on an organized basis but sometimes I just want to see a friend on her own for awhile and laugh and talk about our lives.

I have literary things to go to
I produce readings, I appear in readings, I go to readings, and reading-like things. Frequently I go to this stuff because I'm invited to or I want to, and occasionally I do it because I know I should. Writing is my job and going to readings is a great way to see what my colleagues are up to, to discover any talents I could potentially poach for Funny Ha-Ha, the series I host. If I didn't make an attempt to go to some of these events, I'd feel like I was taking a step back from my career.

Sometimes Steve and I go out, just the two of us
It doesn't happen a ton, but it happens.


I do not have a husband who likes to be lazy with me
If Steve's idea of a great time was to lay on the couch with me and watch four hours of "Law and Order" (and we had a sitting-still-type child), I would be all for this. However, since he has to spend so much of his career with his face pressed up close to a computer screen, he's not really frequently up for lounging on the couch. His preferred way to unwind these days is to go Full-on Dad: sitting on the patio with a cigar and the newspaper. I certainly like reading, but a.) I don't smoke cigars and b.) I don't find it comfortable to sit on our patio for extended periods of time (the chairs are not great and also, bugs). Sometimes we'll watch a movie together but other times if he's doing his Outside Dad thing, I'll watch TV and read a magazine at the same time, or maybe mess around on my phone because he's not there to yell at me for being on my phone. That's usually as still as I get. (However we did watch two movies this weekend, so tandem couch-sitting does happen--sometimes.)

Ultimately, I prefer to earn indolence by being active
I'm the type of person who most enjoys a vacation after a busy, stressful time, and who most enjoys going to bed feeling tired and like the day was productive, as opposed to feeling only partially tired because I spent the whole evening doing nothing. I like knowing that the dishes are done, the coffee has been made, the house has been picked up--then I can crash and feel good about it. I'm not insane about it: if I'm tired, I take a night off from everything, but in the end, this is just the way I operate--I don't think it's better or worse than people who operate at a different pace, and I'm not doing it to try to show off how much I can do. A few weeks ago someone asked me "Don't you ever sit down?" and the answer is yes: when it's time for me to sit down.