As I’ve mentioned before, I just started a new and very demanding job. At the same time, I’m thinking about signing up for an online seminar that has an excellent reputation and looks fascinating â and also promises to be a lot of work. It’s not that it appears to be a lot of work. They literally promise in the promotional material that it will be a massive amount of work.
This gives me pause, of course. I’m already very busy, and I try to draw a very bright boundary between my work life and my home life. I’m not always successful at this, but I truly and deeply hate being stuck on my laptop doing work on a Saturday afternoon when I’d rather be doing… nothing.
I’ve explained to a number of people at various times in my life that I’m really quite lazy. This is usually met with disbelief, because when I work, I tend to work very hard. Most people don’t think these things are compatible, but I think they actually pair very well. When I work I work intensively because I want to wrap it up and spend some time not working. The person who is glued to her desk at 7:00 p.m. on a Wednesday because there’s just too much to do is a soul I just don’t understand.
The trick for me is that I can work very hard for a very long time if I know that this is a temporary state of affairs. I’ll do it for a project, which has an end-point. I’ll do it for a class or a seminar or a conference for the same reason. If I was in a position where I felt that I had to work that way every day, every week, for years I would simply give up and walk away. I don’t have it in me.
What’s funny is that this trait has led to many years of hard work without a lot of down time, because I’ve strung one thing to another for most of my working life. Now I’m thinking about doing it with my extracurricular life as well and questioning the wisdom of that move.
But, as I’ve also mentioned, I turned fifty recently and I’m acutely aware that there’s not a lot of time left.
You can say that again. â The Kid
They say you’ll sleep when you’re dead but that’s not true because when you’re dead you don’t even get to sleep. You just get to… well, nothing. This jibes, because I have a natural instinct to sit around and do nothing for as long as possible. So, the good news is that when I get to the end of this life I’ll have lots and lots of time to do exactly that. The only fly in the ointment is that I won’t be there to enjoy it.
So while I’m here to enjoy it, I plan to. And by “it,” I mean doing nothing. And by “doing nothing,” I mean what I’ll be doing when I’m not busy with work. Or this new seminar.