Blog Dis
It's exhausting being lazy
2024-09-24
The goal of every human being is simple: to minimize pain and maximize pleasure. Depending on what your idea of pleasure and pain is, there are an innumerable combination of scenarios to draw up. Pleasure for me is being able to sleep in, on the days when I don't have to get up @ 5 AM to ensure that I squeeze in a proper work-out, before heading off to work. And pain for me is not being able to indulge in chocolate or coping with the multitude of people determined to thwart my happiness.
Don't get me wrong. I have stupid moments as well. Generally, however, I avoid thrusting my stupidity onto others... well, I try not to 😅. We all know what this is like, when someone makes a monumentally stupid decision, yet they need you to pick up their shattered pieces. Some of you may have family with this hardship, such as when a sibling or child quits their job and comes to you for financial support. Now, how stupid is that, to quit your job before you've got another position lined up? [I've done this too, and no I didn't reach out for anyone to save me, but not having an income sure as hell inspired me to land some form of new employment].
Laziness, to my mind, is the grey area between pain and pleasure. There are benefits to being lazy at times because it allows your mind to wander, to unwind. Similarly, there is a downside to laziness insofar that the act is draining and exhausting. That is precisely how I behave on my off-days, when it rains non-stop or during the winter months when a snowstorm hits. I'm being given the best excuse in the world to be lazy, and I whole-heartedly embrace my inner-lazy. I accomplish nothing other than to eat, read bits and pieces, and for the most part zone out to music or a movie or two. I'm fully aware of these symptoms, to be uninspired to write, work-out, or to converse via text with people, much less dialogue in person. Yet, these periods of wanton laziness are purposeful. It allows your mind to relax, to achieve a level of peace that feels impossible to acquire while in work mode.
I wasn't able to travel in 2023 or 2024, owing to the expenses associated with my periodontal surgery which racked up pretty quick, in excess of $6,000. Luckily for me a dental plan helped to pay a portion but nowhere near all. In 2024, my expenses to release my seventh indie novel, i.e. principal editing, copy editing, website re-design, graphic cover design, banner, media images had also added up quickly, this time in the range of $7,000 to cover it all. Not that I'm unable to handle these expenses bcus it essentially means that I had no option other than to clean out my travel account to do so. We make choices. Sometimes these choices require a sacrifice. I'm never happy cleaning out my travel account because it takes years for me to re-build it. On the other hand, the absence of travel to another country has meant this year that I've had more periods of laziness, when not out cycling or working out in the mornings.
Life feels like a seesaw that dips up and down, and every now and then your bum hits the bottom harder and you bounce back up. Exotic travel too has its price, what I call the post-vacation blues, which set it quickly when you return from your adventure and get back to regular life, and its routine. I fully comprehend the impetus of many to hit an island beach in winter by hopping onto an all-inclusive vacation package, where you can embrace your lazy-animal spirit, to squander the hours in the sun on the beach or clinging to the edge of the pool; the one that has a bar at one end and a bartender more than willing to pre-prepare your Pina Colada, a favourite coconut drink of mine that I've given a special nickname, penis clitoris, which goes over well with the bartenders. But when I return to my life, away from the prolonged period of laziness, at first I'm thrilled to tell everyone about my time away, who I met while on vacation, and so forth. Then once the second week back settles in, so does the post-vacation blues, a deeper and more profound version of lazy that looks like its cousin lethargy. It feels bleak and insurmountable and the only cure for it is to return to some form of work.
As for sleep, laziness doesn't impede sleep providing you choose your periods in timely fashion. For many decades, I impeded my own sleep because of dark chocolate, gorging like some well-heeled woman let loose in a chocolate shop with an array of fancy shoes (the two would not normally be sold together, tho' perhaps they should?). If I have too much chocolate in the evenings, I can sleep for perhaps four hours, only for my brain to bounce awake. Chocolate needs to be consumed earlier in the day, rather than the evenings, when laziness takes the front row to the routine of the work week and getting up early.
I'm not a materialistic person by nature nor am I likely to suddenly change who I am to become materialistic, given how I feel about collecting too many things. However, I am most assuredly grateful for my genes and having a healthy constitution - it means I can be busy and active when I choose to, when I need to, and to switch it off when I absolutely need to dig deepest into the bag of lazy. I also know that exercise has to be a staple activity in my life. I want to avoid the kind of exhaustion that comes with prolonged laziness, when lazy becomes a habit, rather than a luxury.
Don't get me wrong. I have stupid moments as well. Generally, however, I avoid thrusting my stupidity onto others... well, I try not to 😅. We all know what this is like, when someone makes a monumentally stupid decision, yet they need you to pick up their shattered pieces. Some of you may have family with this hardship, such as when a sibling or child quits their job and comes to you for financial support. Now, how stupid is that, to quit your job before you've got another position lined up? [I've done this too, and no I didn't reach out for anyone to save me, but not having an income sure as hell inspired me to land some form of new employment].
Laziness, to my mind, is the grey area between pain and pleasure. There are benefits to being lazy at times because it allows your mind to wander, to unwind. Similarly, there is a downside to laziness insofar that the act is draining and exhausting. That is precisely how I behave on my off-days, when it rains non-stop or during the winter months when a snowstorm hits. I'm being given the best excuse in the world to be lazy, and I whole-heartedly embrace my inner-lazy. I accomplish nothing other than to eat, read bits and pieces, and for the most part zone out to music or a movie or two. I'm fully aware of these symptoms, to be uninspired to write, work-out, or to converse via text with people, much less dialogue in person. Yet, these periods of wanton laziness are purposeful. It allows your mind to relax, to achieve a level of peace that feels impossible to acquire while in work mode.
I wasn't able to travel in 2023 or 2024, owing to the expenses associated with my periodontal surgery which racked up pretty quick, in excess of $6,000. Luckily for me a dental plan helped to pay a portion but nowhere near all. In 2024, my expenses to release my seventh indie novel, i.e. principal editing, copy editing, website re-design, graphic cover design, banner, media images had also added up quickly, this time in the range of $7,000 to cover it all. Not that I'm unable to handle these expenses bcus it essentially means that I had no option other than to clean out my travel account to do so. We make choices. Sometimes these choices require a sacrifice. I'm never happy cleaning out my travel account because it takes years for me to re-build it. On the other hand, the absence of travel to another country has meant this year that I've had more periods of laziness, when not out cycling or working out in the mornings.
Life feels like a seesaw that dips up and down, and every now and then your bum hits the bottom harder and you bounce back up. Exotic travel too has its price, what I call the post-vacation blues, which set it quickly when you return from your adventure and get back to regular life, and its routine. I fully comprehend the impetus of many to hit an island beach in winter by hopping onto an all-inclusive vacation package, where you can embrace your lazy-animal spirit, to squander the hours in the sun on the beach or clinging to the edge of the pool; the one that has a bar at one end and a bartender more than willing to pre-prepare your Pina Colada, a favourite coconut drink of mine that I've given a special nickname, penis clitoris, which goes over well with the bartenders. But when I return to my life, away from the prolonged period of laziness, at first I'm thrilled to tell everyone about my time away, who I met while on vacation, and so forth. Then once the second week back settles in, so does the post-vacation blues, a deeper and more profound version of lazy that looks like its cousin lethargy. It feels bleak and insurmountable and the only cure for it is to return to some form of work.
As for sleep, laziness doesn't impede sleep providing you choose your periods in timely fashion. For many decades, I impeded my own sleep because of dark chocolate, gorging like some well-heeled woman let loose in a chocolate shop with an array of fancy shoes (the two would not normally be sold together, tho' perhaps they should?). If I have too much chocolate in the evenings, I can sleep for perhaps four hours, only for my brain to bounce awake. Chocolate needs to be consumed earlier in the day, rather than the evenings, when laziness takes the front row to the routine of the work week and getting up early.
I'm not a materialistic person by nature nor am I likely to suddenly change who I am to become materialistic, given how I feel about collecting too many things. However, I am most assuredly grateful for my genes and having a healthy constitution - it means I can be busy and active when I choose to, when I need to, and to switch it off when I absolutely need to dig deepest into the bag of lazy. I also know that exercise has to be a staple activity in my life. I want to avoid the kind of exhaustion that comes with prolonged laziness, when lazy becomes a habit, rather than a luxury.
