Perceived Lazy

In my mind, I have an unnatural predilection for "needing to be productive." I'm probably not alone in this, so this is my observation to add to the pile of work and anecdotes on this topic. When I don't do any voiceover auditions after work, or don't wake up in time to do cold email marketing, I call myself lazy. Yet many of my friends say I'm the least lazy person they know and that I'm too hard on myself. Because it's what I did today, and I'm still feeling bad about it, I'll illustrate with the idea of sleeping in. When I sleep in, even if I make a list and get five major things done (such as vacuuming), I still feel guilty throughout the day, or like I wasted it. I'll make a guess and say this stems from my middle and high school years,

There was a ton of yard work to do around my house in Orlando, with three pine trees dropping needles, lots of neighborhood pine trees' needles blowing in, a neighbor's magnolia tree that dropped those flower cones and leaves into our yard, and more. I don't think it's wrong for children to help out in these chores. What I do detest is that nothing was communicated. After a Friday night football game (read, marching band show), I thought I had the right to sleep in. It's the weekend after all, and I have all the time in the world for homework. Nope; I have a vivid memory of one time, upon waking, comeing downstairs and Mom saying, "You'd better get out there. Dad's already been out there for two hours." Again, no communication.

I like lawn-mowing more than raking leaves

It wouldn't have been so bad if, the night before, we set a time, like "yard work from 9 to 11am." Many times in doing the yardwork, my and my siblings' frustration would build as two hours stretched into three, my dad continually finding things for us to do. We'd get our hopes up when we saw no more leaves on the driveway, but then he'd go to some other area of the yard (yeah, a corner lot, so really quite big) and find some thing to do and call us over. There were no set expectations, which is what children need.

The same happened with dinner. I'd be upstairs doing homework or practicing French horn, or God forbid, just reading or playing video games, when Dad would angrily yell our names to come help with dinner preparation. First, you need to understand if my dad was cooking, it was going to be a long process. As a high-end chef, he didn't make quick and easy meals. It's like there was a sauce to be made for the meat, and a sauce for the potatoes, and two kinds of vegetables, and some pasta... It was always nice when Dad wasn't home for dinner and we could quickly make Spaghettios, then get back to homework. So once again, no communication, only their assumption that we would help. No actual request either, but more of a threat.

So today, if other people are cooking, and even if I ask repeatedly if they need help and they say no, I feel on edge. If I sleep in, I feel guilty. At one of my previous houses, when the landlord would come to do yard work, I would ask if he needed help. Fortunately (or un?), he was one of those "women don't do this work" kind of Old Country guy and told me to go relax. All the while though, I felt like he'd come in and yell at me for not helping.

I feel lazy when I'm not productive. On weekend days when I truly have nowhere to be and nothing to do, I do my best to just read, sit outside with my cat, binge-watch movies and shows while embroidering... and yep, all the while I'm thinking of the auditions I should be doing to advance in voiceover, or even that I should be writing, finally getting my fantasy writing career out of my head and onto paper. So many websites talk about the need and definite requirement for relaxation, but truly it is easier said than done.

How do I do this without guilt?

My only solution is to get a few things done on the weekends that I can point to, like vacuuming, dusting, or meal preparation for the week, before relaxing. Or like scheduling the relaxation: "from 10-11am, I can sit outside and just embroider. At 11am, I go work on writing." At least this gets the need to feel productive out of the way to allow me to fully relax... though it sure would be nice to just relax without that first step!

I see myself as lazy most often when I'm not doing voiceover work. When I get home after my 9-5 job with the 35-50 minute commute, all I want to do is play video games or watch something. I have to force myself to do auditions and exercise (a new old endeavor). Most often, I don't get to the auditions until 10pm, when I had 6-10pm free. It's not like my rent paying job is that strenuous, and yet I don't want to do my freelance job after it.

Recently I sold my Nintendo Switch on OfferUp, and at the house of the buyer, there was a food truck. The guy said he and his dad were mostly ready to go on that business, but had been dragging their feet because of being tired after working all day! There's plenty of people that make their side hustle (which they hope to become their main hustle) work only after a day job, but most do seem to struggle with tiredness (or what I call to myself, laziness). Funny how I don't think of other people as being lazy for not pursuing their side hustles after working all day, just myself.

What's the moral to this story or the solution? I gave my working solution for now a few paragraphs ago, getting a few things done before totally relaxing. Or if I want to take advantage of the morning, making sure to be firm with my schedule for when the relaxation is over. However, that's not the solution I want. Though there was a video I watched with one rabbi suggesting that scheduling is necessary to fully relax. I even recall a sex book that talked about scheduling sex in an established relationship, to make sure you have the time to do what you want with the session, but also that it gets done at all instead of pushed to the wayside. So maybe there is nothing wrong with scheduling my relaxation.

Work is scheduled, so too schedule relaxation?

Why are we forced to be productive? Maybe it goes back to a need to be active from hunter-gatherer days. Apparently modern hunter-gatherer tribes, when not doing the food work, just sit around and enjoy each other. I keep going in circles with this idea of needing some productivity but also not doing too much. I guess for me, I'll stick to my scheduling, and that also needs to include scheduled sleeping in time. Then in doing it, I need to learn to not feel guilty, because I chose this and it was scheduled!

If you have tips for not feeling lazy, or things that you say to help your friends realize they're not lazy, let me know!