Girl, you so lazy

If I had a dime for every time someone had told me that I’m too hard on myself, I’d have a fortune. It’s funny, but there’s this standard form I have to fill out every time I go see my shrink, which is supposed to gauge my temperament and bitchability and what not. And one of the questions is something like, “I think about my faults and shortcomings: ___________” and there are 4 choices about varying degrees of obsession. My answer is always the same: D) almost all or all of the time.

My old beloved shrink, Stiff, would tackle it every once in a while. “Do you really focus that intently on how much you dislike yourself?”

“Surely you don’t find that hard to believe,” I’d snark.

“Well,” he’d say quietly. “Maybe that’s something we can work about changing.”

“Good luck,” I said. “I’ve been like that since I was a child. Shit’s ingrained.”

Maybe it’s because I haven’t been on my meds [thyroid or anti-sads], but I’ve been pretty down lately about the state of my affairs. I feel like I get a year older every day, and like I’m watching people around me have lives and families, the opportunity for which has seemingly passed me over. Here, it’s a king sized blanket: come on in and join my pity party, would you?

I know that no one really likes to listen to a bitch-fest (okay, I do, but I’m weird. In fact, when I was a kid, I used to get out my tape recorder [what up 80s!] and pretend I was talking to my best friend Catherine, and I’d just BITCH. Gripe her out, gripe about the dog, my parents, my teacher, my then-thoughts on Gorbachev, whatever. I actually called them Gripey Tapes. And the worst part was, I’d play them back repeatedly to listen to myself rip someone a new cornhole. You could read a lot into that if you wanted to. I try to pretend I never did it, except that my parents confiscated one and still have it in their safety deposit box because they think it’s hilarious. My issues run deep, yo).

So I’ll at least be fair. Perhaps I can write a blog about my faults and shortcomings, and then I can try to write one about how sun and peace shines out of my asshole for X-number of reasons.

First, and most importantly, I think my major disease is a rather unfixable one. In that, there’s not a pill you could take for it. It’s totally intangible, not hereditary, and reversible with determination (I possess none of that). And if there were a pill you could take for it, and I was given a life supply, I’d be too lazy to take it. Because that’s my main flaw: I am FUCKING LAZY.

Think of the laziest person you know. Now multiply that poor, useless bastard by 1000. And you’d get ME.

There are just certain words people would never use to describe me. Lithe, for example. Ambitious. Mild-mannered. Athletic. And industrious. I have turned wasting time and procrastinating into an art form. In fact, the fact that I procrastinate, as I’ve talked about here before, is closely tied with my laziness.

I’m not proud of it. I’m just not a hard worker. I can’t think of one thing in my life that I’ve worked really hard at, except perhaps being hard on myself. But the thing is, I’m hard on myself for a reason. Probably for the same reason my mother was/is hard on me: we think that the harsher we are, the more likely I will be to snap into focus. But I’m telling you: I don’t have it in me. I mean, I need my ass kicked in a major, Bob-Harper-freaks-the-fuck-out-on-your-ass kinda way.

I guess that in 35 years, I just haven’t had my moment yet. Or maybe I haven’t really grown up. (I always thought marriage and chirrun would make you grow up whether you wanted to or not. And I have a cat child, but apparently that doesn’t count.)

And speaking of cat children and laziness, I’m so lazy I don’t even give Butters her inhaler every day. Yeah. How’s that for parenting? (“And do you now know,” God bellowed, “why I have not green-lighted a pregnancy for you?”) I would give Butters my goddamned kidney if she needed it, but I’m too lazy to give her her inhaler treatment every single day like I should. Though it’s fair, since I won’t take my meds, either. Which includes my birth control, which I take sporadically. Yeah, I tempt fate that way. I just dare it to happen.

I could literally make a list of 100 things that I need to do in my apartment to de-shit sty it, and when I accomplish 1 or 2 of those, I pat myself on the back and quit. Like last night: did a load of laundry (well, re-did a load. I’d done it days before but neglected to remove it from the washer (see? Lazy) and so it smelled mildew-y so I had to re-wash it) and changed the sheets on my bed. You would have thought I had climbed Mt. Fuji. That meant, to me, that I had permission to skip all the dusting, sweeping, mopping, clothes-hanging-upping, dish doing, folding, and Christmas shit putting-away I needed to do and finish watching season 3 of Breaking Bad until after midnight. (That Walt is turning into a bad motherfucker.)

Like I’ve said before, I consider laziness (I think God and the gang called it sloth) a personality flaw. And frankly, I don’t know where it came from. I think it’s just a program that came preloaded on the computer, you know? It’s been there since I can remember. I have never, ever been the organized type. Creative yes, but not particularly resourceful and certainly not with-it. I let things boil over into a glorious mess before I muster whatever energy I have (which is always very little) and turn into the Tasmanian Devil, going on day- or weekend-long cleaning/organizing binges. My life’s always been like that: bingeing on energy, money, sleep, food, self-harm, alcohol, studying, whatever. Just so long as I didn’t have to do anything in moderation or pace myself.

My notorious laziness also extends to my job. Like now: am I working? Survey says…FUCK NO. I am typing out this blog. And my job requires that I be relatively fastidious, what with being a proofreader and all, which is like THE WORST profession I could have. (The copywriting flows like honey, thank God.) I spend a great deal of my day – even busy ones, where I work long hours – grabbing snippets of time here and there to whore out recipes and bathroom remodeling ideas on Pinterest, or read people’s status updates about how much they love hot-house yoga or whatever in the fuck. It’s a damned wonder I haven’t been fired yet. It’s probably just a matter of time. If I last another year there without getting the ax, I would be most surprised. Every boss I’ve ever had has had some gripe with me about my ability to pay attention to detail, which is, apparently, something I am not very good at. I chalk it up to just being lazy.

So by the time I hobble home, I have spent the majority of my usable energy just getting through my day, and I have nothing left. If I could go home and go straight to sleep, I would. As it is, I rarely even cook myself dinner. I fix a drank, watch TV, surf the web, and have scholarly conversations with Butters about Greek mythology and existentialism. (Turns out, Butters is quite the intellectual.)

And I’ve mentioned to you my propensity toward procrastinating, which is a kissing cousin of being lazy. So roll all of this into a ball and you get a big boulder of NO.

Personally, I think being lazy is about two things: physical energy (or lack therof), but mostly it’s a frame of mind. And I’ve honestly wondered if there’s a way to break out of that frame of mind. I  mean, I see and know people who are really determined folks. They’re movers and shakers. They get things done. My parents are both this way, in case you were wondering. Where does it come from? Some inner reserve? Am I really lower energy than I think? Is there something specific that makes people able to put their mind to things and then accomplish them? Because I don’t feel like I have that at all. I make excuses for everything.

Do I just not want it badly enough? I mean, if this were about weight loss only, I could understand that. But this is about simple shit. Taking my meds. Giving Butters hers. Not farting around at work. Using my time wisely. Mailing something when I should. Whatever. How in the hell do you teach self-discipline? (Fuck all of you who just shouted in unison, “Your fat ass should have joined the military. That would have taught your ass some discipline,” to which I reply, “Touche.”) I just feel like some wayward soul who’s never been righted. And I’m beginning to wonder how much of this is truly me — just who I am, intrinsically — or if this is something that can be unlearned. I mean, I have some friends out there (who are blog readers, who have four children and work as an attorney and run long distances and not because you’re being chased by a mountain lion) who I constantly marvel at, how they do it. And I am slowly beginning to truly realize that it’s probably best that I don’t have children because I would be a wreck. I can barely keep myself together. (Logic does not work when I watch Intervention and every fucking pill-popping meth head on there has managed to spawn.)

I don’t know. Does anyone else perpetually feel like they don’t have their shit together? Or it is just me? And for those of you who do … what’s your secret? Is there one, or were you always that driven, even as a kid?