I am of the view that people these days tend to take great pride in being “incredibly busy“. Working full time, while volunteering at a Save The Children’s Charity, playing on a champion netball team in your otherwise limited spare time, while renovating a house and serving on several charities seems to be the new “in thing“.  If I’m being brutally honest, the idea of committing myself to a whole raft of extra curricular and career pursuits makes me want to crawl into bed with a cup of tea and a book and not come out.

Get me one of these!

When I was at uni, I was always busy. Full time uni, usually about 20 hours a week of work, serving on student government and drinking a lot at the uni bar were my main pursuits. When I started working full time, I figured it would all keep on going. OK, obviously, I knew I wouldn’t be on student government anymore, but the working and studying (a cruel twist of fate means that once you finish a law degree you have to commit to even more study and training to become a solicitor, usually while working as an articled clerk) plus drinking seemed manageable. It was, for a while. Being a grown up and having “Friday night drinks” , seeing my friends, bragging and comparing notes over all the “really cool and hard” work we were doing, and doing last minute assignments on a Sunday evening.

Throughout all of this “busyness”, though, my favourite thing to do was still lying in bed with some potato chips, hot chips or chocolate and blissfully watching 5 episodes of The West Wing in one go.  While avoiding an assignment due in 24 hours. I was and still am a champion procrastinator.

As the distance between my life as a university student and a grown up grew further by the day, I began to realise something about myself. I’m just a little bit lazy. I really am. I can’t be bothered going out for drinks on Friday night and on weekends, I would much prefer to stay at home with a book, my computer and lots of Real Housewives, than go to a party/bar/big gathering at someone’s house. I often wake up of a morning on the weekend, determined to do a “spring clean” (I have a cleaner, but you know, spring cleaning doesn’t form part of the regular fortnightly clean), by tidying up all the boxes in the spare room, washing ALL THE LINEN, tidying up the cupboards. Then, I realise it is a bit cold and I’d rather stay in bed half an hour more. So that doesn’t happen.

Spring cleaning? Nah, I’ll just stay here…

My family has always been hard working and my mother and father raised us to have a good work ethic. My mother and brother have tremendous work ethic. I do, most of the time, I am not the kind to call in sick to work because “I’m tired” or ever chuck a sickie and I’ll always be the first one to put up my hand if someone has a mammoth task in front of them and needs help. But, I will always look for the easy way to do something. Here’s an example: I’ve been told many times before I would be a good barrister. Argumentative, reasonably quick thinker and confident.  But barristers are self employed and you have to market yourself to get the work. The thought of working for myself seems just way too hard. Again, lazy.

If it hasn’t been made obvious to you prior, I love reading. I’m also too stingy to buy books, so the library is my friend. However, before going overseas, I racked up a whole heap of late fees. $28 to be precise. I can’t put books on hold because I owe them so much money. So instead of trotting down to my library, about 4 or 5 blocks away, when I want to read something lately, I just buy it online. My flawed logic is that then, I don’t have to walk all the way down to the library to get the books, I can just wait TWO WEEKS for them to arrive from the UK at the click of my mouse button. Not only have I spent more than $28 buying books, I’ve also got to wait even longer to get them!

So, when someone calls me and asks how if I want to catch up, I’m usually going to have a free calendar. I don’t pride myself on being “busy” and in fact, love having extra time on my hands. The thought of a weekend filled with “things to do” fills me with dread and I love nothing more than finishing work on a Friday knowing my weekend will be spent at home, pottering around, watching TV shows and reading.

Are you lazy? Do you feel the need to be busy all the time? Are you busy all the time? Do you think people place too much value on being busy?

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