Is it being lazy or is it leisure: Is there a difference?

I was asked this week what I thought was the difference between laziness and leisure and was shocked that I didn’t have an answer.  I sat and thought about it and still no answer. 

 I’m still thinking about it.  And yup, still no concrete answer.

Lazy versus Leisure? 

I think this one is very personal to everyone.  One person’s leisure may be another one’s lazy.

This one has been super hard for me to figure out how I feel.

I know that I am a doer.  I’m an overachiever. I always have been, and it can be overwhelming and exhausting at times.  My husband calls me a shark who always must move.  Between work, PTSA President, gardening, housekeeping/shopping/dinner prep, beekeeping, exercising/teaching classes, and time with family and friends my schedule can be totally overfull.  I’ve been told to chill out and relax so many times.   The idea of being lazy is abhorrent to me.  It’s always been a such a negative. I avoid it like a disease.

I do recognize the sheer number of things on my calendar is crazy and often overwhelming, but sometimes I stare at it and try to figure out what can I move or what I can stop doing.  I frequently have back-to-back events or meetings in the evenings and on weekends, but what gives?  What do I give up?  The list of things I want to do keeps growing, not shrinking.

I’ve read about labeling things in your life with different priority numbers, but that itself seems like a lot of work and hasn’t really worked for me.  Too many things end up being starred as a high priority.

Self-care has been a talking point for some time now. I know I check those boxes as well. Yoga, check.  Daily meditation, check.  Eat well, check. Exercise 6 days a week, check. 

But do I overdo even the self-care?  Can you overdo self-care? Thinking about this is stressful. Now you see why I’m confused about the question.

My next step in the thought process (hard to shed the lawyer in me) was to look to the word definitions.

According to Merriam Webster:

• Lazy - disinclined to activity or exertion: not energetic or vigorous

• Leisure -freedom provided by the cessation of activities

Seems so different on first reading, but why does leisure often feel lazy to me?  And am I the only one struggling with this? I can’t possibly be!

Can intermittent laziness be a positive thing?

For some reason the word lazy is negative to me and maybe that’s why this question is hard to answer.  To me, the word connotes someone who does nothing.  Something I am almost incapable of doing.

I have friends who binge-watch Netflix for hours and hours – I can’t watch TV for longer than two hours at a stretch and only at nighttime.  I have friends who sleep late and take long naps – nope to that either.  I am up the same time on the weekends and set an alarm for 30 minutes for any nap I take when I’m exhausted.   And I know people who rarely exercise, but I stick to a 5-6 day a week routine. And yes, I do recognize that as I write all this down it sounds crazy.  I’ve always thought of it as disciplined.  And that being disciplined is positive.

At some point in my life doing nothing for any period of time became a tremendous negative.  It actually became stressful to me because I thought of all the things I “needed” to do or get done.  And this is the tricky part.  How do I change this mindset and let go of the constant need to do and to go, go, go?

I know I can’t be the only person who feels like this. 

Reframing laziness as leisure

I think reframing the idea of laziness into leisure is the key for me.  And to remind myself that is not lazy to spend time on things I enjoy. It is a positive thing to do for myself.

But for some reason this is difficult as well.  And something else I’ve been struggling with and thinking about.  Many of my leisure activities are really productivity in disguise.  I consider hiking a leisure activity, but isn’t it really exercise?  I don’t even count it as my workout on days that we hike!  The same goes for gardening and beekeeping – all productive.

I need to work on doing relatively mindless activities more, things that I can get immersed in that relax my body and mind.  I need to find more time to read and to paint.  This is going to be the key in my life and maybe yours.

I know it is not lazy to make my mental health and well-being a priority.  I also know it is going to be hard for me to change a lifetime of thinking.  I need to work on reframing how I think about my time and maybe you do too.  (And yes I do see the irony in having to work on being lazy.)

Today I have promised myself that I am finally going to open my paints and work on the project that’s been on my easel for months.  I am going to try really, really hard not to think about all the other productive things I could be doing. 

I know it’s going to be difficult, but my mental health is worth it.