Many years ago in 2009, when I was still working, I wrote a rather therapeutic blog post which was about the importance of being lazy:
At the time I was still working and going through a particularly busy period at work and I basically wanted to rant to let off steam about how I was finding it very difficult at the time to relax and just be lazy.
That was 17 years ago and now that I have retired, I have decided to look again at the concept of being lazy.
When I decided to retire, I was preoccupied with what I would spend my days doing, which is why I bought and read a book about retirement, spent months looking at what I might be interested in doing with lists of potential new hobbies, and ultimately devised routines that I have adopted and spent the last two years following and tweaking.
It means that my days are mostly quite busy. I don’t fill my days like I used to when I worked. There is no time limit on my activities and they are all for fun and the only person driving me is me. There are no “agitators” around (see the above post if you want to know what an “agitator” is).
I don’t have any plans to become a successful author, a concert pianist, an electronic music producer or a polyglot. All of the stuff I do keeps my brain active and challenges me enough to give me purpose.
However, there is one thing I think I am missing out on.
When I was reading the retirement book, one of the things that it mentioned was the concept of having lazy days.
My old nemesis Mr Motivator, a particularly vicious and thoughtless agitator who I frequently encountered during my working life, would have a seizure at the thought of having a lazy day. Yet the book that I read told me that when you are retired, having a lazy day is not something you should ever feel guilty about. I immediately warmed to the idea because for the past forty to forty-five years, I have only really had lazy days on holiday.
What is a lazy day?
In my opinion, a lazy day is a day when you make absolutely no plans whatsoever and just spend the entire sixteen or so hours that you are awake doing bugger all.
Writing, learning a language, playing the piano etc. do not count because, for me at least, all this means effort. There are professional writers and musicians who will tell you that when they are practicing and creating this is not a lazy day. I would also argue that going out to see a football match or a concert is something that shouldn’t be part of a lazy day.
For me, a lazy day means just staying at home and watching telly, reading, listening to music or just sitting in the garden in the sunshine and doing nothing taxing whatsoever. It is a day that requires no effort to get through, spent vegetating with nothing that makes you have to think or challenge yourself with. The hardest thing that you should do is walk around the house, make a sandwich or decide which book to read, which music to listen to or which telly programme to lose yourself in. Things that require your brain to be even slightly challenged should not be considered. Dozing off is actively encouraged and the only physical exercise necessary is to get up to make food, get a cup of tea or answer calls of Mother Nature.
I must admit that when I retired, I was determined not to become a couch potato and spend the entire day watching inane daytime television programmes. I wanted to make sure that I stayed physically fit and also mentally fit as well.
And I do that.
However, the book I read suggested that if, once in a while, I fancied doing absolutely nothing then go ahead and do it. The argument for doing this is if, like me, you have spent forty years being at the beck and call of people who wanted you to sell your soul to a company or a customer or some other nameless entity, then having retired you totally deserve to be able do what the bloody hell you like and that includes having as many lazy days as you feel like.
We have a cockney comedian in the UK called Micky Flanagan who also reinforces what the book says about lazy days but in a more humorous way. Here is his philosophy on lazy days – a warning there is a little bad language in the video:
I really like the idea of having a lazy day, perhaps not quite as lazy as Micky suggests, and I realise that I really should be lazy and do bugger all occasionally.
Why? Because I bloody well can.
