excerpts: The art of busyness is to convey genuine alarm at the pace of your life and a helpless resignation, as if someone else is setting the clock, and yet simultaneously make it clear that you are completely on top of your game. These are not exactly humble brags. They are more like fretful brags, and they are increasingly becoming the idiom of our age. ______________________________ It was after this letter that Burnett realized that busyness of a certain kind—meaning not the work-three-menial-jobs-and-put-your-kids-in-precarious-day-care-by-necessity kind—became a mark of social status, that somewhere in the drudgery of checklists and the crumpled heaps one could detect a hint of glamour. “My God, people are competing about being busy,” Burnett realized. “It’s about showing status. That if you’re busy, you’re important. You’re leading a full and worthy life. … As if you don’t get to choose, busyness is just there. I call it the nonchoice choice. Because people really do have a choice.”
Posted on: Mon, 24 Mar 2014 23:31:42 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015