Repeat until believed.

In a sense, I have always been lazy. ^[1] I think it’s just one of those basic settings in our temperaments, like introversion or curiosity. Some people are born full of verve and ready to take on the world and some of us are born to, shall we say, conserve energy.

And it’s not a depression thing. Not entirely, anyway. Even if I imagine myself to be very happy in my dream life, I would still be someone who avoids what seems like work to me if I possibly can.

And if I can’t, I will devote a lot of my copious mental energies to figuring out a clever way to get the work done with the least amount of effort possible.

That’s not just a part of being lazy. For me, it’s also a point of pride. I love exercising my own cleverness and basking in its glow. Any job becomes easier if I feel like I am doing it in a cooler, cleverer, more awesome way than the default.

In fact, thay’s more important than the actual effort involved.

And it’s not like I am incapable of putting in the work when I feel like that’s the only solution. My deep pragmatism takes care of that. If it’s got to be done and I am the only one who can do it, I do it.

But still, I am a man who enjoys his lassitude. My ideal world would be one where all I have to do is provide the vision, leadership, ideas, and the writing, and all the actual “work” would be done by others.

It’s the same dream I have had since I was a little kid : a life is which all I had to do was be brilliant all day,

Now, from a certain point of view, that’s still work. But it’s a matter of your personal resources. I have an abundance of mental resources like imagination, ideas, problem solving skills, curiosity, enthusiasm, and so on.

So for me, this hypothetical cleverness based lifestyle would not really be work at all. It would be getting paid to do what comes naturally to me anyway.

And isn’t that the dream we were all raised on? The job that isn’t work? The career that suits your natural abilities so well that it’s like getting paid to have fun?

The reality is, of course, a lot more complicated than that, but that’s still the idea.

Anyhow, back to laziness and effort and work. I define “work” as “doing things you do not want to do. ”

You have to define it that way instead of by effort because people do all kinds of effort intensive things of their own free will because they find them fun. People go hang gliding, hike nature trails, play sports, or read up on their favorite topics without ever having to be paid.

In fact, they pay for the privilege. The difference between work and play can be (crudely) defined as the difference between that which they have to pay you to do and that which you would pay them to do.

Even my beloved video games involve a great deal of mental effort. And I am certainly willing to pay to do it. In fact, I have, many times.

Sometimes I think about how long it hs been since I pirated a game, and I feel a mixture of pride at living honestly and shame at being so lame at the same time.

But what about my being a l33t h@x0rz stealing from the Man and justifying it by the fact that I had no money and therefore was not depriving the creators of the game of any money by getting their shit for free?

Seems like a pretty threadbare rationalization to me. But whatever.

My point is that I voluntarily put both money and effort into my video game hobby because it is something I find inherently rewarding.

So perhaps the real difference is a matter not of laziness as it is traditionally defined and simply having a philosophical objection to the idea of work.

Or maybe it’s a matter of a preferred default state. Like some people are set to prefer a state of leisure by default and need a reason to leave that state, whereas others default to a state of action.

Man, just thinking about that makes me tired.

I sometimes think of myself as being like a big lazy predator, like a lion or a tiger or a bear (oh my), happy to bask in the sun or sleep most of the time and only invest effort when I grow hungry and need to hunt.

Except I don’t need to hunt to eat. I am, after all, a modern pampered predator. So I end up just doing the lazy part.

But I know that part of me is not happy with that. Part of me knows there is a lot more to life than what fits in my little cage. It also knows that the need to hunt operates on a lot more levels than mere feeding and that therefore I will not be a happy predator unless I leave the comkfort of my cramped cage and go prowl the savannah,.

But the fear holds me back like a radio shock collar. Whenever I think of walking out that cage door, the fear wells up in me and freezes me in my tracks.

Not for very much longer, though. I am building a fire to burn down the walls of my cage and let me go wander and experience things and learn the way a normal person does, by experiencing life instead of always being outside it.

I don’t know when the final breakthrough will happen. I feel like I have been making the wall between me and the world thinner and thinner for a very long time but the fear keeps it intact…. for now.

But some day soon I am going to break through into the light.

And once I get there, I am there to stay,

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.