Are you busy??

33 Comments

So many people today claim to be "soooo busy"...TOO busy, even. Could you imagine the reaction they'd get from our forefathers if they were to complain about how "busy" they were to these historic people?

Oh, you did 3 loads of laundry today? Well, I wash my clothes in a freezing creek BY HAND. But do go on...I'd LOVE to hear more....Oh, you're too busy to cook? Hmmm, I seem to find time, and I have to shoot it and skin it myself too.

How insulting!! We're not busy.

Agree. 37
Disagree. 31
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Comments ( 33 )
  • anti-hero
    11 years ago | pl

    Cleary we are not busy or we would not be on IIN...

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  • dom180
    11 years ago

    Did you build your computer too? I suppose I must be pretty lazy and inferior to you for, y'know, buying one. Yawn.

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    • Anonymous Post Author
      11 years ago

      You missed the point.

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      • dom180
        11 years ago

        No, you missed mine.

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        • Anonymous Post Author
          11 years ago

          No, I'm pretty sure you missed mine.

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          • dom180
            11 years ago

            Maybe both are true.

            But my point is that you're self-righteously criticising other people's life choices. Disagreeing with you does not mean I have missed your point.

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            • Anonymous Post Author
              11 years ago

              Where was I self-righteous?

              Was it this whole bit:

              "Oh, you did 3 loads of laundry today? Well, I wash my clothes in a freezing creek BY HAND. But do go on...I'd LOVE to hear more....Oh, you're too busy to cook? Hmmm, I seem to find time, and I have to shoot it and skin it myself too."

              Well, that was not ME talking, that was an illustration of a person today talking to a historic person. I wasn't saying I do my laundry in a creek!! Notice I also never excluded myself from guilt here. I said "we're" not busy.

              The point of the post was that people today complain about tasks we have to do that are SO simple now compared to even just 75 years ago. Laundry, cooking, being 2 huge examples. People today claim they don't have time to cook a meal, but look what making a meal entailed 100 years ago. Catch it, gut it, grow it yourself, build a fucking fire, cook it....EVERY DAY. That, on top of everything else you had to get done in a day-just to stay alive.

              I think you just read it too quick and assumed you got the point, but didn't. Slow down.

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  • dappled
    11 years ago

    I disagree. I think people are breaking down because of how much we're dealing with. We're perhaps working shorter hours but gains in efficiency (computers in particular) mean that we do more work faster. I don't believe any figure in the last century or century previous took a week off and came back to one and a half thousand pieces of correspondence that they had to deal with at the same time as doing their normal job. And I'm not talking about the president or the head of some multinational. I'm talking about someone close to the bottom of the chain. Like the man who maintains the mills for a cotton factory.

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    • Anonymous Post Author
      11 years ago

      I doubt they took a week off, period.

      Did you really just answer this post with an example centered on a week's vacation? lol....

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      • dalmationUntoyourSoul
        11 years ago

        i take a week off for my period. every month.

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      • dappled
        11 years ago

        I know that they took a week off. In my part of the world it was called "Wake's Week" and they all descended on seaside towns like Blackpool. The mills and factories simply closed for the whole week. On reopening, production restarted as normal with no backlog.

        I know it seems churlish to say it but work can arrive for me on a Sunday, while I'm asleep, on a week off, on Christmas Day even. Although I don't need to do it right then and there, I do still have to do it. I am never truly off duty.

        I have to manage it myself and at any one time have upwards of a hundred jobs that need constant reassessment and reprioritising based on a complication matrix of interrelated (and opposing) criteria.

        While I'd feel wasted if I was just beating horseshoes all day, it would be significantly less complicated.

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      • TerryVie
        11 years ago

        no, i'd assume you simply missed the point.

        Those correspondences just sum UP if you're gone. But they still come in regardless of wether you do regular work, too.
        So yeah, the intensity of the workload is quite a bit higher than that of pre-industrialization. Note that i refer to the intensity, not to the "hardships" of hard physical labor.
        There's many more things wanting our attention and most of us have to do a lot of mental and social work, too, not merely pure physical labor(which has the advantage of not being a part of your life any longer at the end of your shift).

        I know where you're coming from, but you fail to see that there's also a lot more "expectations" today than back then.
        There's a pressure on us to shave our legs, wear SOME makeup, have hair that looks "nice" and clean, clothes that combine with each other and are perfectly clean, etc. etc.
        If you go wash yourself once a week in the creek, and take your clothes with you every other week, and not care about body hair since you're only nude when it's dark, you will be seen rather...reserved by modern people. Back then: Normal, little time and it had to be distributed in an efficient way. Yeah, today, we have more "free time" but still a LOT of chores, work, or expectations permeating it and eating up huge chunks of it.
        People back then still had time to go to church, play instruments, tell stories, celebrate, carve things, read books, travel, ...
        It's not like they had OUR kind of freedom in deciding what to do WHEN, but yeah, we are almost as busy on the whole picture as they were.

        Also, since you referred to washing and cooking: Back then, traditionally woman's chores...which were not to "work" in mans jobs. Most women were full-time-wifes and cared about the household. So yeah, you are mixing up stuff there.
        I have to work a regular job AND care about my household, and there's no mum or grandmother or children to do chores while i'm off earning the rent.

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  • disthing
    11 years ago

    None of us are SO busy that we don't have time to provide you with trivial responses :)

    But hey, if your 'forefathers' were alive today... It would be today wouldn't it? So that argument doesn't really work. They'd all be using mobile phones, driving in cars, playing World of Warcraft and trolling IIN.

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    • Anonymous Post Author
      11 years ago

      I think they'd point out to us that a lot of what we think we're so busy with is such crap.

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      • disthing
        11 years ago

        Maybe they would, but I doubt we'd hear them over our gasps of amazement - their arrival would either be proof of ghosts or time-travel! :O

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  • [Old Memory]
    11 years ago

    idiot

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  • incapable
    11 years ago

    Shutup. Noone cares

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  • BundleLoop
    11 years ago

    Why yes Im so busy I dint have time to read ur info in ur post, So I just made a comment :)

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  • MissyLeyneous
    11 years ago

    Convenience has pampered us and made us lazy, so yeah, I completely agree.

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  • [Old Memory]
    11 years ago

    What are you babbling about?

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  • kit291
    11 years ago

    not everyone is like you explained. some people still do things the old fashion way. i have to look after my mama, help my bf, sort my own stuff out, make time for friends and family and i don't go around complaining I'm busy. i say it if i really am and i can't just stop what I'm doing. there are different meanings to being busy it's just the way people are.

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  • Wh0Ar3YoU
    11 years ago

    Im too busy smoking weed and being on this site reading funny stories,posts,comments but this isn't one of them. Im out of here

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  • oliveyou
    11 years ago

    I'm not busy at the moment but last year during school I was very busy. Between working full time, being a full time student and attempting to sleep I had barely any time for anything else. I'm hoping next year won't be as bad but it will probably be worse..

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  • GuessWho
    11 years ago

    I'm very busy. (except when I come here)

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  • NeuroNeptunian
    11 years ago

    Actually, our forefathers were able to accomplish what they accomplished BECAUSE they had so much spare time on their hands! Most of them were aristocrats in a world in which the lower class MUST spend their time hunting for their food and doing laundry in a creek and thus were not able to FIND time to get a classical education, to learn to read and write and to learn to invent and do what the founding fathers of ours suggested. They didn't HAVE to hunt or do the work for themselves, they were wealthy, they hired people to do that so they could have spare time to use for their endeavors!

    And seeing as how you have eluded to your lifestyle, I must assume that you are in the same position as the lower class at that time, having to spend your time doing such chores and not having the time to attain an education, for if you did, you would know this of our founding fathers and would not use their names to condemn others for this purpose. In terms of having spare time, they were MASTERS, and they spent their spare time doing what they did.

    Unless you are poverty stricken, you choose to spend your time rejecting the modern conveniences that modern people enjoy. That doesn't make you any busier than people who use their time to utilize modern conveniences so that they will have time to do things that they deem to be more important.

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    • Anonymous Post Author
      11 years ago

      The word is "alluded", and no, you read my post wrong. And, how are "most" of our forefathers aristocrats?? All "forefather" means is our past generations (ancestors), it's no indication of wealth or status.

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      • NeuroNeptunian
        11 years ago

        I assumed that you were talking about our more influential forefathers. If you were talking about the lower class forefathers or much further back into history then I apologize for the misconception but I still stand by most of my post.

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  • nAt2017
    11 years ago

    I guess it's annoying, but complaining usually is- it's not the worst thing in the world.

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  • howaminotmyself
    11 years ago

    Our priorities have shifted. Our forefathers would likely give you the same reaction if you told them you were bored.

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  • thinkingaboutit
    11 years ago

    I work 70 hours a week + school. people get busy. after calculation I have about 15 hours free a week (that doesn't include studying).

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