The Laziest Kid...

Hello Friends.

If you're a regular reader, you know this blog usually comes out on Thursday, except for those times when it doesn't. I often have a legitimate reason for my lateness, such as illness, or not properly saving a document, but not this time. On Thursday after work I started writing another entry and it might have been one of those psychedelic cartoons where the words on the page fall off and land in a heap of gibberish. Nothing I was writing was making any logical sense. What's worse is that this entry was previously thought out and constructed in the old bean counter. I knew just what I wanted to say, just the points I was trying to make, and I couldn't do it. Instead of coming back to it in an hour with fresh eyes, or even sleeping on it, I just left it unfinished in my documents folder and did absolutely nothing from 11.30 that night to 11.30 this morning, thirty-six hours later. Like I did actually nothing. Not a thing.

Dream: Stop being so lazy.

Goal: Achievable. I know people who aren't lazy. I know people who go to school and have full-time jobs. I know people who do volunteer work on their weekends. I know people with children. People who make all of their meals at home. People who wake up early every morning to run. And not run from anything either, just run because they want to run. So an un-lazy life can be lead. But how?

Plan: Take a good look at my own lazy habits in an attempt to jolt myself out of them.

Breaking down my last 36 hours is shameful, but having a record of my aberrant behaviour should cause me to think twice before repeating it. Okay, so Thursday was my last in a string of long work days before Friday, my only day off (I'm working through this weekend). So Thursday night I knew I could stay up late, do my blog, and work on a few play projects, then have a satisfying sleep in. Instead I wrote about two pages of blog that were just awful. So bad I knew I could not publish them in any form. I opened the two play files I'm working on and stared at them both for about half an hour. I think I might have changed one line of dialogue. Then I downloaded a Maria Bamford comedy special and laughed and ate crackers and cheese and then watched 30 Rock with a vodka mixed drink and then Parks and Rec and then YouTubed some news bloopers for awhile and went to bed.

After a Friday sleep-in I did not deserve, I put coffee on and added maybe three lines of dialogue to one of the plays, then went on Facebook for quite some time. Then Jon came home for lunch and we watched CBC for awhile which had a piece about the Powerball lottery winners in the States. We fantasized about what we would do with millions of dollars (I want several homes, he wants to donate to the Kapeche Nation) and then he had to go back to work. I took the bus to the mall downtown under the pretense of Christmas shopping. I say pretense because while I might have spent maybe 30 minutes in actual stores, I was really looking for Cinnzeo. Cinnzeo is a cinnamon bun vendor of the HIGHEST QUALITY! Weirdly, it only has locations in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Alberta, Canada. I'm not sure what the connection is (unless oil barons just really like frosting), but they make a good bun. Turns out there was no location downtown, but a quick internet search at the Apple Store told me there was one in West Edmonton Mall, the largest mall in North America. You had better believe I took the half hour cross town bus to the busiest, most baffling shopping centre I have ever been to, walked the entire length of its monstrous corridors, and finally got my bun.

Feeling guilty and fat, I went home, got my swimsuit, and headed out for some swimmin'. Once I got there, though, I realized I had forgotten my goggles, and so splashed around for only about twenty eye-hurting minutes, went to the liquor store, and came back home. Jon arrived, we ate dinner, and watched Dateline and Family Guy until 1.30 in the morning. I fell asleep. I woke up. I'm writing to you now.

What's disconcerting is that I like blogging and working on plays. If I could, I'd do just those things forever. Why then would I waste this time so spectacularly? I shudder to think what else my laziness has cost me. How many opportunities I let slip away in favour of a cinnamon bun or YouTube. I don't come from lazy stock, either. My parents are hard-working people, as were their parents. Several of my peers are on career and life trajectories that require real work, commitment beyond an eight hour shift and a punch card. I'm sure they permit themselves lazy days too, but by god, they've earned them. Maybe that's the ticket. Laziness is a credit we should all give ourselves once in awhile, as long as we have the debits to support it. I plan to be one useless blob for the couple of days I have off this Christmas, for instance, and it would great to experience those days guilt-free. To afford the pleasure of being lazy, it's time I got to work.