Let's chat about laziness.

I don’t think you’re lazy.  You get up you get dressed you go somewhere you do things.  You make your smoothie and drink it.

No, I’m lazy.  Once in a while I'll do some fake hard work to avoid real work.

Do you know what lazy means?  A disinclination to activity or exertion despite having the ability to do so.

That’s exactly it.  I sit around.  No daily plan.  No delaying instant pleasure in order to get greater pleasure.  

What’s wrong with instant pleasure?

Doesn’t last long.

What about greater pleasure?

I don’t know.  Never had it. 

Maybe it doesn’t last long either. Name a person who you think isn’t lazy.

That’s easy.  Joyce Carol Oates.  She has written over 40 novels and almost that many plays, short stories, nonfiction. She writes so much people make jokes about it. I once saw a picture of her at a party and her slip was showing an inch below her skirt. She works so hard, she doesn’t even know her slip is showing.  If I worked that hard, I’d go out in my pajamas that’s how little I would care about anything else.

Maybe you’re not lazy.  Maybe you are gestating, as in incubating ideas that you will use later.  Or maybe life, as in LIFE, is so hard you are rightfully stepping aside for a day.

No, I’ve been lazy all my life. I'm lazy about the things that really matter.  

If you were not lazy what would you be doing?

I’d be working much harder and getting things done. I'd be focused. I would kill for more self-discipline.

Do you know what 'not being lazy' feels like?
Yes.  I get lost in the task - I could be dead that's how immersed I am in the work.  In fact, that's what I think dead feels like.

I believe we use the word lazy because we don’t know what to call the trait we are really exhibiting.  We don’t know to say: I work hard at physical tasks because I don’t know how to access the task I should be doing. Is there any prompt that makes you work hard?

Yes.  If I get good news I become hyper and ideas pour out of me.  My head explodes. 

Why do you think that is?

I think good news jerks us around, jiggles some part of our brain and makes it want to do things.

So the answer to laziness is to get good news every day.

No. The answer is to learn to jiggle our own brain and make it act as if it heard good news.

Is there anyone you know who has enough self-discipline?

Yes.  I know one a person who is all self-discipline.  Everything he does is deliberate and would be hard for most of us.  He never takes the easy road.  If he did that experiment where you delay eating the cookie in order to get two cookies, he wouldn’t eat the cookie.  He wouldn’t even eat the reward cookies.  He’s all discipline.

Is that person happy?

No.   That person is not happy.

So hard work doesn’t necessarily lead to happiness?

I guess not although I don't believe in that amorphous, ill-defined state known as happiness.

What have we learned here?

I don’t know. Nothing.

Swagger. What is it? Do I want it?

This is as good a time as any to talk about swagger. Women usually don’t have anywhere near enough of it before or after sixty. Roughly interpreted, swagger means a certain slightly teen-agey confidence that you have an edge over the rest of the population or at least all the people you know. I’ve experienced swagger several times in my life. The day that stands out most is when a famous newspaper editor offered me a column in a big city daily. This is what I was thinking: I'm going to be a stylesetter and adorable, too. Everybody will love me and invite me over. I am freaking awesome and brilliant. I remember walking to his office and I could swear my feet were not touching the ground. I felt I owned that city. Two weeks later the editor was fired. I’ve had enough humiliation to have a huge dose of the anti-swagger. There’s nothing that can take the swagger out of you faster than a no-show at a dinner party. Only thing worse is a no-show on a date and worse than that is a no-show of one of the principals at their wedding.

As a newly married young woman I met a cousin of President Roosevelt and since she seemed to take a liking to me and lived in the neighborhood, I asked her to dinner. In some recess of my social climbing bloated mind, I’m sure I was thinking – I am so freaking interesting and special I’ve attracted a relative of the best president and she’s going to be my best friend and possibly give me some of her money, too. I planned dinner with care and set the table with all the best stuff I had at the time, Dansk this and Dansk that. I bought candles although candles were not as important then as they are now and we only used the tall skinny ones. We waited and waited but Mrs. Roosevelt never showed up. No call. Nothing. That’s what is wrong with trying to know important people. They can just not show up and there’s nothing you can do about it. It took me down about 12 notches although I did get flowers delivered a few days later. The tech bubble fiasco took another chunk of swagger out of me along with Mrs. Roosevelt standing me up. The recent minor financial successes that I am having mean very little when I think of the glory days.

I thought all this swagger loss had taught me a lesson but it has not. I’m still waiting for the real fun to miraculously reappear. The other day a magazine named Fast Company contacted me and asked if I would participate in one of their articles. I had never heard of Fast Company but when I looked them up the current issue had Matt Damon on the cover. They sent a photographer and an assistant to photograph me. I don’t know in what alternate universe this magazine found me and decided I would enhance their content but it definitely qualified as a “drag out the swagger” opp. I could not find it. The swagger was gone and I think for good. I just prayed to God my picture would not be too bad and that the outfit I chose would look good. Gratitude for "just nothing bad, please" has smothered my swagger.