How was my day? Why it was busy.

You name the question, "Busy" is the answer. Yes, yes, I know we are all terribly busy doing terribly important things. but I think more often than not, "Busy" is simply the most acceptable knee-jerk response.

Certainly there are more interesting, more original and more accurate ways to answer the question how are you? How about: I'm hungry for a waffle; I'm envious of my best friend; I'm annoyed by everything that's broken in my house; I'm itchy.

Yet busy stands as the easiest way of sumarizing all that you do and all that you are. I am busy is the short way of saying--suggesting--my time is filled, my phone does not stop ringing, and you (therefore) should think well of me.

As kids, our stock answer to most every question was nothing. What did you do at school today? Nothing. What's new? Nothing. Then, somewhere on the way to adulthood, we each took a 180-degree turn. We cashed in our nothing for busy.

I'm starting to think that, like youth, the word nothing is wasted on the young. Maybe we should try reintroducing it into our grown-up vernacular. Nothing. I say it a few times and I can feel myself becoming more quiet, decaffeinated. Nothing. Now I'm picturing emptiness, a white blanket, a couple ducks gliding on a still pond. Nothing. nothing. Nothing. How did we get so far from it?

from Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life by Amy Krouse Rosenthal who lives in Chicago and totally rocks. (the NYT published this piece in 1999 in case it looks familiar.)