I get a lot done because I'm lazy!

SH. It’s a secret. Sometimes not so well kept, but a secret nonetheless.

I come from a family that is industrious and overachieving. If you are not carrying your own weight and half of everyone else’s…you’re lazy. It’s not something that is valued in that side of the family.

We’re nice enough about it. We don’t point fingers or anything. We don’t have a list of lazy offenders. It’s just …I don’t know…KNOWN.

My grandpa paid me the greatest compliment when I was about 20. I was worried that I would raise lazy kids, which seemed to be the norm at the time.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “If your kids are half as ambitious as you are, they’ll be just fine.” Coming from him, that was the best thing that he could have ever said to me. I relive that moment often, when I am feeling like I haven’t done anything of note lately.

I hope that he never finds out my secret. That deep down inside, I’m lazy. I’d rather take the short cut and leave things half done. There’s this dark side of me that considers it every time I am working on a task. That ugly little voice that tries to tell me that no one will know, that I can leave it undone – or half done – and it will be all right.

“No, it won’t!” argues that saner side of me. “YOU will know! You will know that you were LAZY!”

It’s a chance that I’m usually not willing to take. I buck up and do it the way that I should. So that I can live with myself, knowing that I didn’t take the easy way out.

There are days that I wish that I could just lay around and do nothing. (although, when I was on bed rest for days and couldn’t do anything, I hated it. I guess that we are never happy!) Nearly every day, I think about doing nothing…or as little as I can…but I can’t do it. I just can’t accept that lazy side of me, and so I keep running.

I try to do as much as I can in every day. It’s not always work; I also try to fit in some leisure activities. Everything, however, is written on that mental list, so that I can check it off. Instead of counting sheep at night, I can count the tasks that I have accomplished and I sleep like a baby. It makes me feel good to know that if my Grandpa were here, he would be happy with what I had done that day.

My grandparents were busy, busy people. Even at 80 years old, my grandpa ran all day long. He was involved in everything. If anyone needed anything, he was there to help them. He had a better social life than I did, in my 20’s! He left some mighty big shoes to fill…shoes that my father put on with ease. Shoes that I need to fit into.

So don’t tell anyone, but I’m lazy at heart. The great thing is that because of this inner lazy child, I am able to talk myself into accomplishing more in a day than I think is possible. Just by doing it a little bit better than I want to, a little bit more efficiently. That laziness keeps me from being mediocre in my attempts to better myself. It keeps me running faster, to avoid that natural tendency.

I am pleased with the things that I get done. My boss is thrilled with the things that I get done. And it’s all becoming second nature to strive so hard. I hardly hear that little voice anymore. I think that my Grandpa would be proud, too!