The cult of busy: 6 tasks we wish we'd never started
‘I wish I’d never started this.’ How often do you think that? Halfway through a recipe, an improving book, some sex, a workout and, most particularly, craft. Fiddly, sweaty, grubby craft. With glue and thread and tiny beady things. But ill-advised creativity aside, what about household tasks?
The ones you are so smug about embarking on until, just as you reach the point of no return (curtains are halfway off the rail, mattress is standing on its side threatening to topple and crush everything in its path, hired carpet steamer looks and feels like it’s going to explode), you realise that this was just another way of making yourself busy.
God forbid you should start these jobs on a clear Saturday afternoon. No, no, no. Clear Saturday afternoons are for doing nothing. Stuff has to be slotted in on an already-packed day so that it doesn’t infect a nice, airy, empty day.
You know what they say? If you want something done badly, ask a frantic person who is not so hot at managing her time
Which is why you find yourself, at 8.07am on a Monday, sweating into your nightie, surrounded by pans and salad bowls (all of which you hate, by the way – why can’t it all be Le Creuset?) as you clean out the spidery corner cupboard of the kitchen when you have to be suited and booted and ready for work by 8.30.
The cult of busy is so insane. Gainfully occupied is one thing, but quaveringly frantic because you’ve piled task upon errand upon project is most destabilising. Everything you do is a little bit rubbish. But you know what they say?
If you want something done badly, ask a frantic person who is not so hot at managing her time. Now, I know it’s 10.47pm, but don’t you agree that this rug (yes, the one under the king-sized bed with divan drawers full of heavy things) should be moved three inches to the left? Like, now?
Things we wish we'd never started
Any kind of WhatsApp group Wouldn’t it be jolly if, ahead of a holiday/party/Christmas, we all piled on to a WhatsApp group to be jolly about the jolly time we will have/are having/have had. Except the phone won’t stop buzzing with memes and questions and thinly veiled accusations but no one dares leave the group so here we are, locked in this dance of death for ever.
Flirting with the corner-shop guy It’s nice to be friendly and feel welcome, and it’s good to flex the flirtation muscle, but now we have to twinkle every time we run out of foil (and does he think we’ve put on weight?).
Learning a skill A slightly-later-in-life thing. To keep the old synapses firing. Piano. French. Chess. To ward off brain melt. But we resent the effort and are still bad at it after three months and maybe we are just bad at everything and we hate ourselves for being pathetic and perhaps the time and money would be better spent on a decent therapist. Speaking of which…
Therapy Can open, worms everywhere. We now realise how totally dysfunctional we are. And they are. And everyone is. WHAT’S TO BECOME OF US?
Waxing Damned if we do. Damned (and hairy) if we don’t. We should embrace our hair, but when it’s bikini time and we realise we are about to unveil Teen Wolf, we chicken out and wax it all off. Which is minxy for 10 days. But bumpy and grisly by day 11. Pass the sarong.
Deliveroo Too easy. Now we are fat and bankrupt. Plucking our brows while drunk Oh, hello Marlene.