John Kelly: Too Busy to Write a Better Headline . . .

For the past three months, I have been carrying around in my briefcase a prescription for new eyeglasses. Do I have new glasses? No.

Why? Because I'm too busy to get them.

Because I haven't gotten new glasses, and thus see the world as if looking through a scratched and dirty aquarium, I have trouble telling which is the right earbud and which is the left earbud on my iPod, the tiny gray "R" or "L" on a white background not being very legible. I've been meaning to mark the right one with a red dot so it would be easier to insert into the proper ear before jogging on the treadmill in the morning.

But I've been too busy to find a red marker, which hasn't been a hardship because I'm too busy to jog on the treadmill.

I'm too busy to do anything.

I'm too busy to replace the stained and tattered ironing board cover over which I drape a dress shirt every morning. There's a nice new cover sitting on top of the dryer, and every time I iron a shirt I think, "I really should change this, but I'm much too busy right now."

Sitting on my desk at home is a letter that suggests I owe money for long-term disability coverage, money that I thought was being automatically deducted from my paycheck. I have been too busy to check whether this is the case.

I have been too busy to respond to a few dozen pieces of reader mail, which teeter in menacing, accusatory mounds in my office.

I have been too busy to return assorted Washington Post photo files to the photo library and which molder under the piles of reader mail. I have been too busy to clean my office.

I also have been too busy to make, one, a dentist's appointment and, two, a doctor's appointment.

I was too busy to make an ophthalmologist's appointment, but I made it, saw the eye doctor and got a prescription. Which I have been too busy to get filled.

Is there a fine line between being too busy and being, oh, I don't know, lazy?