Okay, no, not actually. Maybe I’m preoccupied; I’m busy because I’ve made myself busy. I am precisely that person Tim Kreider is talking about in “The Busy Trap.” I don’t work in a low-paying, dead-end job. My job doesn’t require me to pull 12 hour shift work. I’m not working my ass off to stay afloat. I’m not saving lives.

I’m volunteering my time to do stuff for other people; I am consistently doing it. I am filling my schedule up because I don’t know what to do with free time. I actually fear not being busy. I’ve been like this since I started volunteering in grade 6. That’s almost 12 years ago (shit, I’m old). At first, I did it to make friends; I did it to spend less time at home because there was nothing at home for me. I was at that age where being with family wasn’t cool and yet, I wasn’t allowed to be with my friends. It was either home or it was school, thus, the #firstworldproblems of being a Chinese female in North America and to top it off, the baby in the family. I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere. So, HELLO! I was going to spend as much time at school with my friends as I possibly could. Need scorekeepers for volleyball and basketball? Yep, count me in. Need photos for the yearbook? Yeah, I know how to use a camera. What’s that? You need students to help put the yearbook together? Oh, yeah, I’m down.

And it never stopped. It still hasn’t. It was engrained into my mind and now I’m addicted. Now, I’m a workaholic.

So sometimes I long for a different lifestyle…to be honest, I miss the European lifestyle. At least, the one I experienced….

Let me tell you, the Europeans...they’ve got it right, they have it figured out. Maybe I’m biased because I was on vacation; I was on my own time and my own schedule. I wasn’t in a rush to go anywhere (except those few times I almost missed my train and had to run through the station). I’ve never ate so much gelato and pastries in a single day as I did during my time in Italy. I would have never imagined eating an entire baguette in one sitting, but in Paris, I did. I’ve never taken so many naps in parks, in fact, I hadn’t done that ever until I went to Europe. It appears to be a common extra-curricular activity, if you will. Life was slow moving, it seemed like it was waiting for me.

I learned about the importance of living in the moment. Haven’t we all heard quotes about that? I know I have, numerous times. “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift, that’s why it’s called the present” (I'm not good with citations but according to Google, this quote was spoken by Bil Keane) we’ve all heard it or something along those lines but how many of us actually believe that? How many of you can honestly say you live in the moment? I can’t, that’s for sure.

The Europeans though, it would appear as though they can. Why else do they have cafés on every other block in their cities? Why do they not give a flying rat’s ass about work tomorrow when they have today to be with their friends and their family? I learned that mentality when I went couchsurfing in Berlin. I did my own thing during the day and my hosts took me to a park to hang out with them and their friends every night I was there. We never went home before 2:00AM. I once asked if they all started work or class later in the day since they stayed out so late so consistently. The answer? No, they had class or work around 8:00 or 9:00 in the morning. They didn’t care though, that was the last thing on their mind because right now they were with their friends and it was a beautiful summer night. Work and school they would worry about tomorrow. This clearly wasn’t a mentality only their group of friends shared because no matter what park we went to, no matter the time, it was always full of people. The same when I was in Paris, the parks were never empty. Maybe I’m generalizing, but I’m attributing that to the European lifestyle.

Flip to the North American lifestyle. We couldn’t be more opposite from our counterparts in Europe. Maybe work starts at 8:00AM but our days begin at 6:00AM to get ready and eat and because if we don’t give ourselves that extra hour in between to get stuff done, we’ll be behind in our work and too busy for other things. We are constantly in a rush to go from one place to the next; to go from one task to another. We are never satisfied with what we have because we always want more thus, we work more. As evidence in the evolution of technology, we’ve barely figured out how to take full, and I mean FULL advantage of the iPhone 5 and the 6 is already out. My 5 is still in good condition but the 6 is faster, bigger, better. Yep, better trade up. That’s materialistic, think about the intangibles. We set goals quite often and we achieve them. We should stop, reward ourselves, reflect on what we did to reach our goal; but it’s rare that we do that. Instead, we look for our next goal, we begin our next chase. We go from dwelling on the past to dreaming of the future all the while, ignoring the present.

To top it off, we are constantly distracted by social media. How many of you have noticed how boring Facebook has gotten over the last little bit? Despite knowing that, how many of you still check Facebook multiple times a day? I do. Twitter? Same situation. Instagram? I mean, I can only look at so many photos of your cat or your food or your workout outfit before it just gets old. Or the selfies, yes, the selfies. Stop. Just stop. But you won’t and I probably won’t either. And when you think about it, how many hours a day do you waste doing this? It adds up.

And how many other hours of your day do you spend doing pretty meaningless stuff? I mean, truly useless? The other day, I argued with a group member for an hour and half, AN HOUR AND A HALF, about our paper and the same issue. He didn’t understand what I was saying. I didn’t understand what he was saying. We were confused and decided we’d talk to our professor the next day. Okay, no problem. Too bad we already wasted AN HOUR AND A HALF of our time we’ll never get back. And how often does that happen to you? Be it a work meeting, a group meeting, or some other random meeting you ended up in? It’s draining. It drains your energy for other stuff and then you’re too tired or too exhausted but you don’t want to admit that because in our society that essentially translates to laziness. Your solution? “I can't. I’m busy.”

I can no longer count the number of times I’ve blown off my friends because I’ve been “too busy” or too tired because my day was “so busy.” I work. I work a 40-hour job in a 24-hour work week. Plus, I work pretty much every weekend. I’m a full-time student. We all know that being a student is a 24-hour gig; you don’t go home after classes and just forget about it. You do homework, you read, you study. I argue that you have more time as a full-time employee than you do a full-time student. And I still volunteer. I’m busy. And I love every minute of it. What I don’t like though, is how bad of a friend I’ve become because of it. What I really hate, is the fact that I can only blame me for every time I've said "I'm too busy." I'm living proof that I use "busy" as an excuse on one too many occasions.

I just recently completed a 30-day yoga challenge and I'm hella proud of myself. I started going to yoga consistently when I got home from Europe. I purchased a 3-month unlimited pass from July to September. I went at least 4-5 days a week...until school and hockey season started because I told myself I was too busy to go to yoga. Well guess what? I just did 30 yoga classes in 30 days all the while attending school, going to work, and volunteering. I just showed myself that I am in fact, not "busy." I'm proud of my accomplishment but what I'm not proud of is what was neglected during that time; my friends. So I've decided that I need to be a better friend. There's no more saying "I'm too busy" to spend time with a friend especially since I just proved to myself that although I have a lot going on in my life, I can always make time for the things I want, for the things I have time for. It's time to rediscover my loyalty.

So here’s some advice I picked up while doing research for my Exploring Creativity project. It's what I'm going to start doing in my life and it's what I challenge you to do too.

Stop saying you’re busy and start telling the truth. Start being specific.

On that note: stop accepting “I’m busy” as an excuse. It’s not. Ask for the specifics.

Remember that everything on your schedule is there because YOU put it there. You control your schedule. Choose appropriately.

Prioritize. You have time for the things you make time for. You always do.

Relax and take time for yourself. Take care of yourself. Everything else will fall into place.

Accept the situation. Positive or negative, accept it without any judgments, acknowledge that it’s present. Face it head on.

Become comfortable with uncertainty. The future is unwritten and life is the art of drawing without an eraser. Be present. We all make mistakes, but we learn from them.

Eliminate the distractions. Stop thinking and checking on social media. Stop your internal to-do list; stop worrying about your next meal. Be present in your task at hand. You’ll be more productive this way, too.

Live in the moment. If this wasn’t clear in my post and the last 8 points. You’re not being present.

And always remember:

                          THIS MOMENT IS OUR ONLY GUARANTEE.

I wish I could claim those advices as my own, but I can't. I wish I could claim every point in this post as my own, but I can't. If you're looking for more information on anything I've written about send me a message, leave a comment; I'd be more than happy to share. Or look for yourself, I spent countless hours on YouTube and Thought Catalog when looking up information for this project. There's a wealth of knowledge in the world and people are sharing, you just have to find it.

Until next time…here’s to life outside the four walls!