Laziness is the oft overlooked key to balance. Laziness allows people to rest, to process, and to enjoy one another. Laziness is one of my best skills, and the best way to spend three day weekends. Yet, laziness is the thing I tend to overlook when planning fun.
I once had an amazing vacation with a wonderfully good friend. Here is what we did: we met at my home in NJ and drove to the town 45 minutes outside of the lake area we would be staying at. We bought liquor and groceries. We each had packed games, books, and DVDs. We then continued driving, arriving at the vacation home we were borrowing. Here's what we did not do: plan anything beyond which groceries to purchase. What followed was an amazing week where I would wake up between 7 and 9am and read. He would wake up around 9-10am, making is way out to the great room some thirty minutes later. Without ever discussing it, it became our habit to play dominoes or SET (live, not online) while eating a simple breakfast of fruit, cereal and/or yogurt. Then he would go to read or nap while I went to swim or walk. I would arrive back at the house and quietly grab a snack, clean up, and sit out on the porch with a book or journal, sometimes doing nothing more interesting than staring at the leaves. Then we would reconvene (again, with no discussion or plan, just a natural sense of the rhythm) and drink, talk, cook dinner (generally LESS simple fare as we both were itching to cook for the other), and watch 2, or if it was a particularly ambitious evening, three movies while doing a few shots. There was a lot of deep discussion and a lot of laughter. It was one of the best respites of my life, and the time I felt closest to that friend. I have had wonderful vacations since then, but never have I felt that completely rested again.
Now, however, when people visit (or if I'm being very honest, in the 6 weeks before anyone visits; why yes, I am a type-A planner, thanks for asking.) I find myself making lists of where to eat, what to see, and what we will do. This visit, by two of my oldest and dearest friends, has been no exception. I wanted to hike, and that was thwarted, so we replaced that with happy-hour-hopping with one of my awesomest friends who is here in Boulder. We three planned a dinner party (which included lentil soup, kale salad, green beans with roasted garlic, homemade butternut squash ravioli with brown butter and sage sauce, a corn bread and rosemary encrusted pork loin, and a homemade apple cake . . . so, you know, a nice easy meal to prepare), made sure to see some of their family, some natural beauty, and some touristy wonders, and have gone for a run. Today was supposed to be another run, some time in town, and another dinner. This is similar to most of the time I have taken off in the last two years, whether it be for a visit to someone else, or the happy occasion of someone coming to visit me. Run around, eat, see this, see that, eat, see something else, do something cultural or touristy, eat again, get in some exercise, see or do something local, and did I mention eat?
It was kind of a relief when my best, best friend, and the only person to know me for so long that the time is measured in decades, not years, woke up and crawled into bed and said, "Maybe we could just skip the run and make a big breakfast instead." When I spend time with him and his husband, it is usually at their house and there is usually a great deal of cooking, but also a great deal of quiet, chilling out time. It's strange that I didn't think of that as part of the recipe when they were coming here. (Though of course, recipes and ingredients were key for the day o' cooking we had on Friday. and can be passed along to others by request.)
I don't advocate lying around and doing nothing if it means lapsing into a regular habit of failing to get things done at work, or in ones' personal life. It would be a bad result if this idea of needing to rest meant that the laundry never got done, or that colleagues at work felt I was unreliable. In my case, the greater danger is if laziness turns to inertia when it comes to exercise. That quickly leads to a lack of motivation to work on my fitness, and that quickly cascades into apathy about preparing food, which in turn triggers eating less healthy, which then makes it impossible to fight off the voices that call on me to eat things that are just ridiculous . . . whole boxes of Cheezits, three slices of cake, frozen pizzas, etc. But on the other hand, what I learned from the non-stop pace of September is that if there is no break, sooner or later, the system of working hard and working out hard gives way under the strain. Once the wheels come off the cart, it's impossible to steer it to a gentle stop.
It's hard to know what to do about this. Essentially what I'm saying is that I need to find balance within my approach to find balance. I need to locate the balance, but not lose perspective and homeostasis between rest and seeking as I look for the end point. I don't want to leave rest out of the picture, but I know that spending too much time inactive and without purpose is dangerous. So, as I seek the place where those pieces are all accounted for and snapped into the puzzle, I need to both work hard, and rest deeply.
It's hard to know how to get to a place you've never been to. I've never had a lifestyle that meant I could workout the 8-10 hours a week I need in order to lose weight, while also having the 2-5 hours a week for fresh food preparation, and being able to get 6-8 hours of sleep, some quiet time to just be, either with myself or with people who help me feel like my best self. I've never had that. In fact, I generally only have that for 3-6 days at a time when I visit these two friends in Boston.
It is a wonderful and lovely gift that they came here to visit me, and to see the life I have made for myself here, through a lot more hurdles than I bargained for when I first conceived of this move. It is even more significant that they brought with them, without perhaps knowing it, the very timely reminder that rest is not an indication that I'm not serious about my work, my endeavors to work on myself, or my life.
The trick of laziness for me, personally, is to be lazy enough to re-charge, but not so lazy that it becomes a slippery slope or a hole I feel I can't get out of. (Remember how tricky holes are for me?) The careful work of making lazy exist in correct proportion to fun and activity when creating good times with other people always involves two important things: communication and flexibility. I have the one in spades and pretend that that makes up for the dearth of the other (blush).
In fact, as I was writing the first draft of this post, we were all enjoying the post-waffle glow and slowly making our way through showers, second cups of coffee, checking email, and all the other hazy to-do items that are so much more pleasant when done slowly, among good company, and langourously. As I was typing, a voice piped up over the music and clack of keyboard saying, "Ummmm, so, are we taking a walk downtown? And are we still talking about a hike?" It was a reminder to me that while sitting around un-make-upped and deep in thought was perfect for me at 1pm, that for others, the lazy quota was full.
So, we did hike (finally! Redeemed from the thwarted hike of Thursday), saw great views of Boulder and of the Flatirons, and then headed downtown for some of what I think of as quintessential Boulder: Pearl Street Mall and dinner at Mountain Sun. Then finishing the day off with some self-serve frozen yogurt (which is fast becoming deeply associated with Boulder since we now have four of these locations, rivaling our number of Whole Foods groceries) (ummm, also, I know it's bad form to have two parenthesis, but I cannot mention Whole Foods without mentioning the totally brilliant youtube vid about the Whole Foods Parking lot. It really reaches it's apex when he rhymes "bra" with "quinoa." ), chat, and the bi-annual music exchange.
I say this whenever I am on vacay, but it really strikes me that when I walk more, eat less (but what I want), sleep enough, laugh more than enough, have a few drinks, and have positive human contact, life seems much more doable to me. I sometimes make pledges on vacation and say that I will find ways for there to be, "more gin! more pedicures!" and then it never works once I'm back in the thick of things. The pendulum swings hard to the right, and I become a worker bee. Then the pendulum swings far to the left, and I crash. Vacation, time with friends, that's the only middle ground. I also have the opportunity, as I happened this morning, to have this imbalance modulated not just by my own motivation, but by the needs, wants, and suggestions of others. So, my pledge is this, I will try to have some balance as I seek more balance so that there is laughter, sleep, and some time for laziness.
Thanks to my friends for coming, for loving me, for putting up with my ridiculous need to plan everything and the difficulty with which I part with those plans, and for understanding that I rarely find the middle ground between lazy and busy. It's quite something for the two of them to have known me this long and still like me this much . . . farewell, you two, see you for some more epic cooking and relaxation over New Years!
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