We
have fallen into the habit of working just about every single
day, including weekends. I don't think it's a particularly satisfying
wany to live our life, but it's hard to break bad habits. And
a lot of the things we do for work are done because we like to
do them, so at some level I can't complain. The truth is, I often
don't enjoy just doing nothing, because it feels so pointless.
Most of the time I am doing nothing I find myself fretting about
the constructive things I should be doing, or the fun I am not
having. Guilt ensues, and I get trapped in the mad circle that
just results in my being miserable.
Only
on major holidays do we indulge ourselves and take some days off.
And this year we actually did find a little time to relax. We
managed to fit in a few movies. Syriana, exciting, timely
and excellent. Casanova, cute but dumb. And Brokeback
Mountain, sad but excellent. We saw some friends. And we had
the grand daughters over for a sleep over and goofed around with
them doing a silly art project.
We
must have really needed to relax, though, because today was one
of the laziest days we have had around here in a very long time.
We
got up and went to coffee.Then we drove out to my son's to drop
something off for my granddaughters. We got back home and we never
left the house after that. In fact, we hardly left our chairs.
We
surfed the net for a while, and then we put on Charlie and
the Chocolate Factory. My, is that asurprisingly dark and
slightly scary movie. But Roald Dahl would probably have liked
this version much more than the original Willy Wonka.
Then
we had some leftover duck and rice from last night's Chinese restaurant
while we watched the movie, and I fell sound asleep with the cat
on my lap. When I woke up, I felt like I had been drugged, and
even the cat was so zonked out I could hardly get her to move.
I
got up, wasted some more time doing some completely useless computer
stuff again, and we ate leftover chicken teryaki while some mindless
TV shows droned in the background.
There
was absolutely nothing redeeming about this day. I hope it is
not predictive of the coming year. But I do think, with a little
more practice, I could learn to enjoy laziness.