I am not a normal person, but I think that has been well established.
While this is clearly evidenced by my love of Eighties Christian Hair Metal and fascination with funny sounding outdated words it has been made very clear by a recent discovery, or rather a recent admission of what I probably always knew.
I hate vacation time.
That felt pretty un-American just typing that out. This must be how Communists feel on a daily basis.
But it is true.
While everyone else is counting down the days until they get a chance to sleep in and relax I look ahead and see what else I can accomplish with the extra time I will have. While everyone is clearing their to-do list I am adding to mine. I absolutely despise not being busy and overwhelmed with something.
And only recently have I been honest with myself to figure out why. I have come up with three simple reasons that I hate having time on my hands.
Free-time makes me think about myself instead of a job or task at hand. Jobs, no matter how difficult, are still easier to wrap my mind around than the strenuous task of introspection. When I have a task or a goal I immerse myself in it and solve stuff. The harder the task, the easier it is to dive head first into it and distract myself. Veni, Vidi, Vicci- give me another job.
But don’t make me sit and think about my lingering insecurities or growing seeds of bitterness. Don’t give me the time to seriously evaluate my dreams and who I am becoming- that is far too messy. It doesn’t fit into my planner and I can’t just check it off a list. No, keep me so busy that I have no time to be a real person. And if I don’t have a job to do at least let me have my phone in my hand so I can distract my brain with something mind numbing.
Having extra time eliminates the legitimacy of petty excuses. Being busy all the time is a great way to avoid people and when you can pull out your to-do list and show them just how much you have to do they will understand why you can’t just drop everything and get coffee with them. And God must understand why you can’t finish that thing He called you to start because you have so much else demanded of you. When He is tugging at your heart to go encourage/ pray for/ witness to a person you can honestly say “but God this project is due tonight, as soon as it’s finished…”
But when my to-do list runs out my excuses look like the bold faced lies that they are. So keep me busy.
Having nothing to do reminds me that I value myself by the length of my to-do list. Everyone knows that the busier you are the more important you must be. When nothing is demanded of you and nobody has to meet with you then you must not be anything special. At least that is the belief my actions over the past few years has reflected. My deadlines have become my lifelines.
What about the fact that two-thousand years ago my Savior came to this world to redeem me from death before I have even thought about getting something done in His name? What about the sixty six book love letter that God wrote to me to describe how much He loved me and what He had planned for me?
God wants my hands to the plow but it is not because I have something to prove. How can I impress the God who created the Universe and accomplished an infinite amount of jobs before I even had my morning coffee by having a busy schedule?
Where I am like most people is in the fact that around this time of year I make resolutions for the next year. But unlike most people, I usually stick to my resolutions for a longer amount of time. I once even made it half way through February before forgetting about a resolution I made in December.
And seeing as how this year is almost over I have been working pretty hard on a long list of things that I am going to get done in 2015 to make me feel extra important and distract myself from real intimacy with my Creator. I even had the forethought to look over a tentative outline of my entire year and make note of particular seasons that would be less busy than others and schedule out projects I can put my mind to in order to fill the space.
But then my to-do list ran out and I found myself on Christmas vacation wandering around the house looking for something to do. I briefly tried to spiritualize it by asking God to put me back to work to get stuff done for His kingdom but very quickly I had to come to terms with the fact that I despise free time for the reasons I have been writing about. This is pretty sobering and I am still trying to mentally navigate through it but at the end of the day I have to admit that I haven’t completely overcome those insecurities I thought were behind me.
So I am scratching my list of resolutions and starting over.
The goal this year is to slow down.
I want to get more stuff done than I did last year but it will not be at the cost of being a real person. I refuse to continue treating the things I do for God as a valid substitute for being with God.
So if you need me I will be off clearing my schedule.
While this is clearly evidenced by my love of Eighties Christian Hair Metal and fascination with funny sounding outdated words it has been made very clear by a recent discovery, or rather a recent admission of what I probably always knew.
I hate vacation time.
That felt pretty un-American just typing that out. This must be how Communists feel on a daily basis.
But it is true.
While everyone else is counting down the days until they get a chance to sleep in and relax I look ahead and see what else I can accomplish with the extra time I will have. While everyone is clearing their to-do list I am adding to mine. I absolutely despise not being busy and overwhelmed with something.
And only recently have I been honest with myself to figure out why. I have come up with three simple reasons that I hate having time on my hands.
Free-time makes me think about myself instead of a job or task at hand. Jobs, no matter how difficult, are still easier to wrap my mind around than the strenuous task of introspection. When I have a task or a goal I immerse myself in it and solve stuff. The harder the task, the easier it is to dive head first into it and distract myself. Veni, Vidi, Vicci- give me another job.
But don’t make me sit and think about my lingering insecurities or growing seeds of bitterness. Don’t give me the time to seriously evaluate my dreams and who I am becoming- that is far too messy. It doesn’t fit into my planner and I can’t just check it off a list. No, keep me so busy that I have no time to be a real person. And if I don’t have a job to do at least let me have my phone in my hand so I can distract my brain with something mind numbing.
Having extra time eliminates the legitimacy of petty excuses. Being busy all the time is a great way to avoid people and when you can pull out your to-do list and show them just how much you have to do they will understand why you can’t just drop everything and get coffee with them. And God must understand why you can’t finish that thing He called you to start because you have so much else demanded of you. When He is tugging at your heart to go encourage/ pray for/ witness to a person you can honestly say “but God this project is due tonight, as soon as it’s finished…”
But when my to-do list runs out my excuses look like the bold faced lies that they are. So keep me busy.
Having nothing to do reminds me that I value myself by the length of my to-do list. Everyone knows that the busier you are the more important you must be. When nothing is demanded of you and nobody has to meet with you then you must not be anything special. At least that is the belief my actions over the past few years has reflected. My deadlines have become my lifelines.
What about the fact that two-thousand years ago my Savior came to this world to redeem me from death before I have even thought about getting something done in His name? What about the sixty six book love letter that God wrote to me to describe how much He loved me and what He had planned for me?
God wants my hands to the plow but it is not because I have something to prove. How can I impress the God who created the Universe and accomplished an infinite amount of jobs before I even had my morning coffee by having a busy schedule?
Where I am like most people is in the fact that around this time of year I make resolutions for the next year. But unlike most people, I usually stick to my resolutions for a longer amount of time. I once even made it half way through February before forgetting about a resolution I made in December.
And seeing as how this year is almost over I have been working pretty hard on a long list of things that I am going to get done in 2015 to make me feel extra important and distract myself from real intimacy with my Creator. I even had the forethought to look over a tentative outline of my entire year and make note of particular seasons that would be less busy than others and schedule out projects I can put my mind to in order to fill the space.
But then my to-do list ran out and I found myself on Christmas vacation wandering around the house looking for something to do. I briefly tried to spiritualize it by asking God to put me back to work to get stuff done for His kingdom but very quickly I had to come to terms with the fact that I despise free time for the reasons I have been writing about. This is pretty sobering and I am still trying to mentally navigate through it but at the end of the day I have to admit that I haven’t completely overcome those insecurities I thought were behind me.
So I am scratching my list of resolutions and starting over.
The goal this year is to slow down.
I want to get more stuff done than I did last year but it will not be at the cost of being a real person. I refuse to continue treating the things I do for God as a valid substitute for being with God.
So if you need me I will be off clearing my schedule.
No comments:
Post a Comment