I’m wicked and I’m lazy

I have not put pen to paper in any meaningful way for at least a year. When I say pen to paper of course I mean tapping away on my phone, with one finger mind you, but anyway the result is the same. When I say meaningful, I am referring to a piece that grabs your attention whether it be a poem, a review a silly fiction piece or just me grappling with some problem real or imagined and talking out loud about it.

It is said you can write your life; they call it scripting. Right now, I am in suspended animation save for watching my brain cells die off and noting the phenomenon. I used to script big … big theatre roles, big holidays an enjoyable day job. Currently I have a decent night's sleep as a primary goal. Acting - gone, writing - well what is it we are discussing now? It’s hardly inspiring stuff. Holidays - last one was great, but it nearly killed me, not literally but I have never experienced that level of exhaustion and foot pain. I like my job but I still don’t want to be working beyond the end of this year. I am doing as little as I can as it is.

I apologise for the negativity, but here is the thing. I am lazy. Always was and always will be. Does sitting around doing nothing much apart from staring at the goggle box have value for me? Looks like it does...

I’ve been called lazy all my life by parents and teachers, their frustration palpable “if only she’d make some effort she could do really well”… and I suppose the real truth of the matter is if I enjoyed something, felt as if I had some control and talent in that direction I could produce something good or at least of an acceptable standard. If I did not enjoy whatever it was, actively disliked it or found it hard I would stubbornly avoid it like the plague, accept no help and “Gillian is failing in Mathematics” for example would become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I suppose I did things in my own sweet time. I went to university about 5 years after my peers. I thought I ought to, I chose my course on the basis I didn’t require one to be mathematically minded. I followed that up by applying for a job that specifically asked for that degree. Then spent 16 years hating that job and being half-assed in my execution of it. I could not see the point of it. But it took 16 years for me to leave. If that isn’t laziness in its purest form, I don’t know what is.

Even when I thought I’d found my place in the acting world and my laziness took a back seat for a while, it crept back little by little. Until my interest in making the considerable effort following that path required seemed to just blow away with the wind. I’d fought my bad habit for a few years and for a while it looked like I’d won.

But habits that have been around for a long time have a way of inserting themselves back into your life. do they not? it’s not as if every self help book out there tells you not to hold on to your negative self beliefs. As if it were that easy to let go.

It’s unfortunately a human thing we do while we try and make sense of who and why we are the way we are.

Well if this little piece does anything… it’s to shake those little (actually big) thoughts loose. And try at this late date to scrap those decades old self-defeating ways. Wish me luck!