First, a haiku about the sofa:
Living room settee,
You make me feel wonderful,
Yet also ashamed.
It’s really hard to properly relax and do nothing.
I work at an outdoor gear company. It’s excellent because you work with a load of like-minded people who live for being outdoors.
Like in other workplaces (probably), every Monday you ask each other how your weekends were. Unlike other workplaces (probably), you squirm with shame/embarrassment/guilt if your response didn’t involve something gnarly like a mountain marathon or a round trip to Scotland in search of dry rock. So we usually qualify ‘No I didn’t get out‘ with ‘because I had to…‘.
Sometimes you couldn’t get outside because you really had something important to do. This feels more acceptable/less shameful.
For example, you didn’t spend your weekend running up a mountain to swim in a tarn because your kitchen ceiling fell in. You didn’t go climbing because you cut right through your thumb with a tin can. You didn’t go out running because you’ve got a chest cold and you should never run with a chest cold (or is it a head cold?). So you stay in reluctantly, maybe you go to the climbing wall to exchange commiserations about the bad weather.
Other times you could get out but you choose to stay home and relax instead. Come Monday this feels harder to justify as a weekend well-spent. I mean, you can relax outdoors – isn’t that the outdoor lifestyle?
But as much as you can relax (sort of) on a sea cliff belay ledge or a 20 mile trail run, it’s a different kind of relaxation to baking a cheesecake* or lying face down on the sofa whilst Stephen Fry reads Harry Potter to you again. The former is a sort of meditative relaxation where you’re still doing something quite strenuous, the latter is more along the lines of doing nothing, or at least very little.
We all feel a bit bad about doing nothing, but is it really that terrible? We can’t be epic all the time. When we feel obligated, the compulsion to spend every evening out being adventurous can become a prison.
Embrace your lazy side and feel no guilt! Enjoy the occasional weekend relaxing and make those epic weekends count all the more! We may all be active outdoor types, but there are days when all we really need is to spend the weekend descaling the kettle then watching all 8** Star Wars films whilst eating pizza. Yes sometimes you should push through the lethargy and be epic, but others you need to listen to your body/the state of the kitchen/the mountain of unopened bills and letters and take a day off.
After all, it’s about enjoyment, not obligation.
– Hati
*Baking a cheesecake isn’t actually that relaxing.
**What qualifies as a Star Wars film is controversial, but let’s not open a can of worms.
Hati Whiteley 