Being too busy is one of the loneliest feelings I know. I hate it with my whole heart. It’s lonely because there’s all this stuff going around in my head all the time, all the time. And the stuff won’t shut up, which makes me have to be in there with it. Sometimes I’d like to share it with someone because that would make me feel better. But I always either feel like everyone else probably has their own stuff going around in their own heads and they probably don’t need to add mine to it, or that it can’t be spoken until it makes sense, which it never does, because I can’t get any of it figured out or prioritized or thrown away or whatever….so it stays in there. Unresolved and incomplete. And loud. I would even call it incandescent, if only that made sense. Because I really like that word.
Being too busy doesn’t really include all the stuff I’m doing. Because the stuff I’m doing is great. In fact, we just had a wonderful dinner with wonderful friends that we haven’t spent time with in far too long. It’s the stuff I NEED to do that can’t ever get done. That’s where the loneliness is. It’s all mine and nobody else’s and I don’t know how to do it or what to do with it or how to make the world stand still so I can go to a beach for a couple of hours. And watch the sunset.
I’m not completely alone though. I think there’s this man in my head driving a team of horses and cracking a whip, because my head hurts like a son of a gun. I think that man is shouting “Kee Yaw” whenever he cracks his whip. Which reminds me of “kiosk”. Which reminds me of a mall where people are doing Christmas shopping, which is the LAST thing I want to add to my list of things in my head. Maybe the man cracking the whip is Santa Claus and it’s not really horses, but reindeer. Whoever he is, I wish he’d stop. He’s hurting my head. Some people out there might like to take this opportunity to tell me to stop drinking coffee. They might like to relate my headaches to caffeine. Don’t even go there, people. Just stop that train before you even get on it because me and the man in my head are not going to buy that ticket.
Don’t worry; I’ll join the land of the living again sometime soon. In the meantime, I just feel compelled to let everyone know that I’m really busy, which means I’m really lonely. And being lonely is okay, every once in a while. Especially for someone like me, who really likes the idea of crying and tries to do it often. I don’t always succeed at it, but I still like the idea of it. Not like I want to add that to my list of things to do tonight, though.
I wish I knew some good lonely songs. I’d like to listen to some right now.
Fierce Peace 
try “tonight I wanna cry” by Keith Urban, always makes me cry, just a little too close to home, I’m feeling kinds that way too, just overwhelmed, running around doing dumb errands when I’d just love to be in my jammies with my favorite blankie and watch a movie that makes me cry, p.s. I love you and your giant heart and your busy mind…
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I’ve never related more to the first paragraph of a blog post that I haven’t myself written. Thannk you for being so articulate. Try ‘Homesick’ by Kings of Convenience.
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I feel most lonely when I am completely alone with no one to rattle off my random thoughts to. I love the kind of business you are talking about, not in a healthy way either, I just like to be buried so that I can avoid all the feeling stuff that will rear its truthful head the moment I slow down. I cry almost every time I listen to Hank Williams singing ‘I’m so Lonesome I Could Cry’
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I want to cry right now. I can’t though because I’ll be going to work shortly. Maybe later, but more then likely not.
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One of your best posts ever, I totally agree, it is how I feel all during the holidays with my job….I don’t listen to lonely music, I would put in a movie, like little women, that makes me cry every every every single time.
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THE babe and I just listened to Praise You In This Storm, by Casting Crowns… and that song makes me cry like a tiny little baby…. wait… The babe, the baby and I listened to that song just three minutes ago.
And the song reminds me of loneliness so sick I felt I could die, and made me cry so much that I felt so alive.
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I am having a hard time commenting because I relate too much to this post. But, in a “Am I losing my mind?” kind of way. There are a million things that need doing or saying and if I don’t say them all now to someone, they will never get done. They will be trapped in my mind forever; swirling around and driving me crazy.
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oh good. i’m glad someone else is lonely and insane. makes you feel less lonely.
matt and i’s theme song has been “long december” by counting crows. its a good lonely song.
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Fierce,
You sure have a lot of deep thinking, deep feeling friends. And then there’s me: for that busy loneliness, I recommend watching COPS alone in the dark. There’s nothing more meaningless to numb all the stuff (and that man cracking the whip) inside your head. Makes me cry every time.
Love,
plunky
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I listened to every song suggested here. Great songs. I love them all. Long December is actually still playing right now as I write this comment. Thanks, friends. You know, I can’t say that I watched COPS, but I did watch Good Morning America in the dark this morning while the kids were eating breakfast by candlelight. There was a story ABOUT a cop, a security guard actually, who shot and killed the man who went on the shooting spree at the church in Colorado. I cried at that. Man.
So here I go into my day…..a million errands to run, ending with a Christmas program at school tonight where Sadie has a solo. I think we’ll all get through it.
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What’s lonely to me may not be lonely to you but try the song “One is the Lonliest Number” by ???
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One of my favorite lonely songs is “In The Wee Small Hours Of the Morning,” as performed by Frank Sinatra.
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