It's not like anyone needs me to tell them this. It's not like this is going to be a surprise to anyone. But lately I've been thinking about different types and levels of busyness.

In some sense, I'm already infinitely busy. Trivial demonstration of this: on some level, I would like to read every interesting book that comes out. Yet, they keep making more books of at least some interest. In fact, they make text of interest faster than I can read it, and it seems likely that this will continue indefinitely. I could do that for the rest of my life — even if I live forever, as I hope to. (Along with, I suppose, everyone else, or at least with some people who write interesting books.) Of course, I'm not going to do that with my life. I barely read any books. Too many other interesting things to do. I may write a blog post about that obvious fact, as well.

But, much like theoretical mathematics, not all infinities are equal. Some infinities are more anxious, or more effective, than others.

For instance, here's another way you can be busy: having a lot of appointments at specific times that you have to keep. Due to my foibles, I find this basically impossible.

Here's another way: having a lot of things you have to do, at some point, somewhat urgently. Even though this isn't as bad as the appointments, I still dislike this intensely, usuall,y because the things I have to do usually aren't things I want to do.

Here's another way you can be busy: having a lot of social engagement possibilities you can choose between and not being able to make all of them at once. This one is actually isomorphic to the book case above, so it's one of the more pleasant ways to be busy — but specific events in time are still rivalrous in a particular way that book reading usually is not.

OK, so, here's one of the worst ways to be busy, which also has a puzzling quirk I will get to later: the worst way to be busy, I think, is when you're very weak and beaten-down by life such that you don't really have the energy to accomplish anything. You are, therefore, infinitely busy, and yet getting nothing done. Luckily, this state usually passes. Also, it's possible that you should just take stimulants to deal with this state — I am coming around to the idea that this is a much better strategy than previously suspected (except for people who regularly took stimulants already, who definitely suspected this was the good life.

The above paragraph is kind of the climax of the post. But here's the weird quirk: sometimes, when I'm weak enough that I can't accomplish anything (and, keep in mind that I use "accomplish" in a very weak sense, which includes reading books, etc), my preferred pastime, the thing I naturally gravitate towards, is setting up more things that I will need to accomplish later! Like reading wikipedia pages about books and bookmarking them to read later, or things of this nature. I think this is actually just a bad habit and if I'm doing this then it's a strong sign that I need to engage in higher-quality entertainment when exhausted, or just fall asleep, or just admit to myself that I'm never going to accomplish those other things at this rate. (Ideally, I would be throwing them into a priority queue of things to do, and very low, so it would be fine. But often for structural reasons I can't do that, and my many distinct list of things to do that I accumulate become burdensome.)

Anyway, I don't like being busy, and am always endeavoring to be less busy — so that, of course, I can do other things I like! 😅