I May Not Look Busy

I love the way people automatically assume that if I don’t have a client currently sitting in front of me, I must not be busy.

I’m obviously available to sit around and listen to coworkers, neighbors, and miscellaneous people off the street talk about their pets, their parents, their problems, their lunch...whatever it is they feel like talking about. 

No one asks, “Are you busy right now?” when they walk in and find me pecking away at the computer keyboard — I do nails. If I’m not doing nails, I can’t be busy. It’s not like I have a thousand social media pages to upkeep; a website that includes a blog; this blog; photos to resize, watermark, and upload to a thousand social media pages; banking; bills; e-mail; networking groups and forums; and YouTube tutorials to watch. Not to mention all the little personal errands on my to-do list like chat with Dell support to try to figure out why my still-relatively-new desktop at home won’t work, write ride reports of our daring motorcycle adventures, and fill out forms for payroll taxes.

But since there’s no one here right now, never mind that I was planning on using the 20-minute break I didn’t expect to have because I got “lucky” and my last client wanted a basic fill instead of a backfill to call the IRS and ask them why they want more money from me. But, by all means, go ahead and sit down and tell me all about the dress you bought for your high school reunion, I’m not doing anything important.