Depending which day and time you ask, the vibe is either ‘powerforce’… or power-down!
It’s arguably one of my greatest epiphanies - this realisation that occasional ‘lazy’ or defeatist tendencies, do not necessarily a ‘lazy’ (or defeated) person make.
Instagram has a name for people like me, apparently, who fluctuate between extremes of motivation.
People for whom there’s a definite finitude to vim and vigour, which makes their ‘energy’ hard to pigeonhole…and even harder to reconcile against the one-or-the-other narrative we’re so often taught.
The name is - the ‘active lazy!’
Self explanatory really, and a testament to the rich and so often contradictory tapestry of what it means to be human.
This hybrid being - who will be just as easily be found running 5k one minute, as they will being slothful as sin the next - is something many will probably relate to.
Luckily, it’s gone are the days when an affinity for sofa surfing, is a stick we could use to beat ourselves with!
To the contrary…nowadays, exercising the right to say FTS is not just accepted, but encouraged… as laziness finds new meaning, in the shadow of ‘self care.’
Maintaining an ‘always doing’ schedule, by contrast…it’s not quite as cool or trendy as it used to be.
Just as well, really, since it is now widely acknowledged that there is a winning in quitting, that is scarcely taught in those powering-through ‘climbing the ladder’ years.
In reality, quitting, in true one-door-closes-another-one-opens style… it can be life-changing, whether it happens to look like going rogue on a self-imposed running schedule, or downing tools in a dead-end job!
Having done both (many many times) AND having been guilty of clinging on with the crampons of ‘it’s not that bad really’… I feel well poised to say!
DON’T!
I can now appreciate that knowing when to give up, down tools, move on or demand more - it’s a life still like no other.
The benefits might be as simple as some sofa-mediated mindlessness … or one of those cliché’d new beginnings which everybody talks about, but nobody expects to ever find small-printed into the fabric of a resignation letter.