Posts tagged cbc

It’s a man! No, It’s a goat! No, it’s… it’s…

Jenna Marie Wakani photo

…Me in a sparkly HaleBop dress at Shinan Govani’s Worthy 30 party last week. I told you I’d post more photos when I found them. Or maybe I didn’t. Either way, more on the goat man later in this post.

For now, look at my goatman-fearing face in Fashion Magazine, Toronto Life, Compendium Daily and Notable — ’cause it’s my blog and I can brag if I want to, brag if I want to, brag if I want to…

Wrong song. Still good.

Ryan Emberley photo

A few weeks ago, an opinion piece by Tim Kreider called The ‘Busy” Trap was published by the New York Times. As someone who is chronically over-scheduled, it hit me like a ton of bricks — And I was far from alone.

The piece, or at least the sentiment behind it, made some waves , to say the least.

I wanted to write my own overwhelmingly eloquent, insightful-enough-to-get-a-retweet-from-the-Times take on the Busy Trap but, ironically (or not?), I’m far too busy for that. And also, everybody else has already voiced off on this. And also, I’m not good enough to get a retweet from the New York Times anyway. And also, I don’t even care about a friggin retweet, SHUT UP NEW YORK TIMES, YOU CAN’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO!!!

*ahem*

Here are a few key quotes from The ‘Busy’ Trap that really hit home for me:

“Almost everyone I know is busy. They feel anxious and guilty when they aren’t either working or doing something to promote their work. They schedule in time with friends the way students with 4.0 G.P.A.’s make sure to sign up for community service because it looks good on their college applications.”

“Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness; obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, in demand every hour of the day…”

“Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets. The space and quiet that idleness provides is a necessary condition for standing back from life and seeing it whole, for making unexpected connections and waiting for the wild summer lightning strikes of inspiration — it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done.”

Powerful, yes? But part of one of the zillion rebuttal posts I read also rang pretty true for me. This one, by Yale Daily News writer (and likely fellow over-achieving millennial) Sarah Swong:

“Kleider speaks as an adult addressing other adults… The busy schedules of young people, on the other hand, feel like more than distractions. We are young — we are fledgling. We don’t have careers or families, those universally understood anchors of adulthood that the Great Recession has now delayed. We are still figuring out where we’re from, what we believe, and where we’re going next…

Kleider misses that our busy habits are not only self-preservation — they’re about identity, too. To be sure, both adults and young people may be acting in fear about who we are already. The more relevant questions for young people, however, is why uncertainty preoccupies us so much and why we rely on adult benchmarks to define ourselves in the first place.”

Now, please cleanse your intellectual palette by reading all about this man in a goat costume who has been spotted hanging around with real goats in the mountains of northern Utah.

Nobody knows who he is and they can’t track him down. They call him goat man. He’ll likely break into your home this evening and try to kill you with his creepy little flesh-hooves while you sleep or something, fair warning.

Ahhh, j.k. As far as the officials are concerned, he’s not doing anything wrong. He’s just… strange.

I will win the Pulitzer for that piece, I can feel it. I can smell it.

Or maybe that’s the goat man I can smell.

Hello?… Is somebody downstairs?…