UNITED STATES—I will be the first to say that I am not a fan of lazy individuals and when I say lazy, I guess I have to clarify what I mean. When I refer to laziness I mean in the workplace and in life. When I refer to lazy I mean not wanting to do anything with substance and not caring what others have to do to carry their slack. It becomes a domino effect that has more of an impact than the person who is doing nothing cares to consider.
However, I do believe most individuals who work deserve to have that lazy day once in a while where life sort of stops for you and you just do nothing. I mean you have the initiative to want to do something, but your body and mind refuse to allow you to actually do anything of value or substance. That happened to me right after the New Year’s holiday. I had to work of course, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day so I wasn’t in the most festive or party mood like many people in my orbit.
The body was just beat and brutalized from work and as much as I hate to say this, I needed to rest, my body needed to be in turn off mode. That rarely happens for me, but it happened at the start of the New Year. I began to question why I wasn’t more lively and ready to usher in the New Year and I was reminded, you just worked nearly 30 hours in the past three days before January 1, 2024. I grabbed a bite to eat, and I turned on the TV and before you know it, I was out by 12:10 a.m.
I made it to the New Year, but just barely. The next morning, it was back to the drawing board for more work, and while the workday was slower than usual (it was a holiday), I ended up working a nine-hour workday that led to me crashing on the couch when I got home. I needed to do the dishes, clean up the house and begin work on taking down Christmas decorations. I told myself there was plenty of time to do the things that needed to be done.
I turned on the TV, I watched for several hours and I didn’t think about anything else. I felt bad at first, but as the day progressed it felt good to do nothing. Taking my mind off all the responsibilities for a period of time, just felt right. Like it was something I needed to do to feel rejuvenated and to unwind after a crazy few weeks of work. Americans take that for granted, like unwinding by watching TV or taking a few hours to just lounge around the house and do nothing is a bad thing, but the reality is, it is not.
We do have to be careful about showing a pattern to the kids that this is what you’re supposed to do when you get off work because they will think it is the norm. However, it is okay to unwind after work and you don’t have to apologize for it, which was something I always suspected. Lazy is not good, hard-working is, that is what you’re taught as a child and you take that notion into adulthood. I am here to say lazy is ok once every so often when you’re working nonstop all the time without much me time. Life is about change, sometimes we need to embrace it more.
Written By Jason Jones
Photo by Adrian Swancar.
