Takin' care of busy-ness.

When I was in college, I had a couple of friends named Pam and Bill. The three of us were very fond of the joke where when someone says "How are you?" you say, "Busy." I know, it's not really that funny, but there you are. Anyway, eventually that evolved into a new joke where whenever the three of us saw each other, instead of asking "How are you?" we would ask each other, "Are you busy?" And then the other person would say "Yeah, I'm busy. Are you busy?" And we would basically bombard each other with as many uses of the word busy as we could for a few seconds before going on our way. It was silly, but little inside jokes like that can really cement a relationship in a way that few other things can.

Anyway, I've been thinking about that this week as I've been very busy, but whenever anyone has asked me why I'm so busy (or when I try to think of something to write about here), I can't seem to point to any one specific thing that's taking up my time. I've just been bomambarded with busy-ness.

Pretty much all of it has been at work. The first mainstage show of the semester opened tonight. I don't usually have a lot of specific jobs on the mainstage shows, but I try to be around the theater a lot so that I can a) be available in case of an emergency (like when they blew a fuse backstage in the middle of the show on Friday and all the running lights went out), and b) so that I can catch any little details that I see slipping through the cracks. So far this show has been relatively free of big problems. So were the first freshman project of the year and the first student directed project (two of my protege students worked on those, so I wasn't worried about them). But the second student project hit a big snag. I'm not going to gossip, and you wouldn't know any of the people involved anyway, but I saw the trouble coming, and worked to keep it under control; but it blew up in our faces anyway and the hammer had to come down hard. I hate it when the hammer has to come down hard. I'm just too empathic -- I have a very hard time doing something I know will hurt someone else's feelings (especially if I have to look them in the eyes while I do it to them). It was a problem at the Apollo and it's a problem in my personal life, and it's a problem now. I want to believe in actions having consequences, but I just don't want to be the hammer, you know? Does that make any sense?

Eh. I'm rambling. I'm going to shut up now and go to bed. G'night!

Oh, but before I go, here it is - your Moment of Zen:


(Nan will know what this refers to.)