Laziness & Creativity

“The need to express one’s self in writing springs from a maladjustment of life, or from an inner conflict which the adolescent or the grown man cannot resolve in action.” (Emile Herzog 1885-1967, from The Art of Writing)

In my blog profile I noted that “laziness is a virtue.” Most people don’t get the gist of that idea. It’s not only a statement about the current societal need for 'round-the-clock-busy-ness, or a protest rant on the type-A world that socialized me. Laziness is a quality that few people master, and I too, suffer at times from lack of it! To put it plainly, a lazy person is the one who will get the job done right the first time, because there is no way he is going to tolerate doing it again for no good reason. Lazy people love to do what is necessary, but never what isn’t. As a lazy person myself, I am angered by people who do substandard work. Those kinds of persons make more work for themselves and the next guy, thus violating the ‘laziness clause’ at every turn. Laziness, as much as I admire it however, is not without its problems.

I experience intermittent phases of not being my usual active and determined self. These periods of sullen disinterest in life last about a week or two, with a span of about six weeks of relative normalcy in between. To be sure, I have never been accused of being within the range of any socially accepted normative measure, but I know my own natural rhythms well enough to recognize when something is amiss. The hardest part about this time is the irony that springs from its eventuality. Internally, my creative juices are still flowing like mad, but externally I cannot seem to manage even the smallest degree of discipline, and fail to pen these darker-day epiphanies to paper, even if for no other reason than retaining them for future reference.

This lull in the creative action cannot be attributed to the taking on of more or greater burden than usual at work or home, wherefrom one might tailspin into a ‘crash and burn’ upon reentry into the normal routine. My normal activity levels remain carefully gauged by an innate need for no more than is absolutely necessary, so there is never any drastic change in the quantity of labor required during this phase. Being a religiously lazy person by nature, I am immune to megalomaniacal schemes of world domination, social causes that require long hours of marching, and the vexatious American addiction to squeezing productivity out of and into every waking moment of life. I live by two important mottos, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, and “Someday, but not today.” Being a capable multi-tasker is not a reputation that I hope to earn; impressive as it may appear to a society driven by doing, doing, and doing more. Perceived as infinitely capable employee or spouse means that I will forever-and-always become subject to the urgent requests of others to get this, that, or some other monumental task completed at a very last and crucial hour with maximum efficiency and accuracy. Sorry, but I no longer want that job. Maybe it’s old age accompanied by a lack of enthusiasm.

No one and nothing demands anything of me in this regard, except for the creativity’s holder. So what if I don’t do anything that I consider meaningful or creative? Isn’t free and easy thinking part of the process anyhow? Remembering that meaning is a special balance between the laws of physics, human nature, and my overactive cerebral reverie, I can develop some strategy for handling this emotional quandary. Laziness becomes a dilemma when writing because good writing entails draft after draft and long hours of editing; always a problem for the truly lazy man, but especially in those times when my motivation is at its nadir.

I understand that respite is beneficial for the psyche, but internally, the creative transmission is still running in high gear, even when the overall ‘car’ isn’t moving. I want, more than anything, to drag these unmotivated and clumsy fingers to the keyboard to hunt and peck into Arial font whatever cogitations that come to mind at any given moment, but most of the time I just go back to sleep, run out for some Chinese food, or turn on the idiot box. I am full of ideas, yet my posterior remains glued to the futon bored silly from my own lack of stimulation. Is my frustration because I choose to do nothing or because nothing has been chosen for me to accomplish? It feels like Providence is restraining me against my will.

Maybe I do carry around too much of an obligation to be creative. Imposing creativity upon oneself seldom produces the desired results, and action that backfires violates the ‘laziness clause’ of my personal philosophy. Yet, creativity is part of my inescapable persona, and it can manifest itself in one of two ways, neither of which I control in any great measure. There is the apparent and outward productive sort of creative effort that comes to literary fruition, or the other, that hides itself in the passive and thoughtful process of reflection that spawns new ideas, but is still ethereal and unexpressed. The latter, if not at least scribbled on a napkin, will be lost forever to the ether.

At the very least, I can rest my overburdened imagination and casually observe whatever is going on around me. Maybe I’ll start calling this my ‘listening to whatever time’, when I can fill myself with movies, reading, happy daydreams of something pleasurable, l play with the cats a bit more, have an extra glass of bourboun, and sleep in.

What could it hurt to relax? After all, even this is something worth writing about! In the end, I am lazy because it is time to be lazy, otherwise, Providence would have found some pressing obligation for me to fulfill. The down-time is meaningful as part of the overall balance. Once refreshed I can once again return to the ‘world of words’ and generate something satisfying, entertaining, or, dare I say, meaningful.

“I don't think necessity is the mother of invention - invention, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness. To save oneself trouble.” (Agatha Christie 1890 - 1976, from An Autobiography)