Listen to me read the following below:



http://esmewang.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/You-Are-Not-Lazy.m4a

Hey, you.

I just wanted to let you know this: You are not lazy. You never have been.

Still, you doubt this. You feel it gnawing in yourself as you fret over where your day has gone and where it’s going. It doesn’t matter if the day has just started or if it’s three in the afternoon or if you’re sitting, stress-stricken, in front of your laptop at 6 PM–the anxiety is there that no matter what you’ve done, you’re fundamentally lazy. And the fundamentally lazy are among the most loathed creatures on earth.

You might as well be eating bon-bons in bed while watching Netflix all day. (And if you are? I bet you have a damn good reason for doing so.)

Maybe you’re disabled or ill or both. You receive benefits. But that’s hazard pay–it’s the check in the mail that you get for the dangerous life of healing that you live. It doesn’t mean you’re lazy.

Maybe you’re as well as you can be, physically, but you suspect your adrenals are shot and maybe you have an ulcer and those headaches are migraines that don’t quit and through it all you suspect your own poisonous laziness, this insidious power that means all of your work has been for naught; you are worthless. No. You are not worthless. Look at what you’ve done. An email! Do you know how much effort writing an email expends? I want to throw a goddamn party for you. Look at you, getting through life the best you can. Just look at your magnificent self in the mirror. Give it a kiss. Give that not-lazy mug a sloppy kiss.

Maybe you’re working yourself to the bone and you suspect you could be doing more, more, more, in which case I want to swaddle you in my diamond-print quilt and whisper, Hush, hush, you are okay, you are wonderful, you are doing the best that you can and I want to commend you for that.

You are not lazy, sweetheart.

The idea of laziness was, I suspect, invented by the same people who love to dangle Hell over our heads in response to anything deemed vaguely inappropriate. I have more respect for Hell-mongerers than I do for laziness-mongerers, in fact; at least the idea of Hell is borne out of the concept of actual despair, as far as I can tell, whereas laziness is a whip wielded in order to make sure you produce more than a human being is physically capable of producing while slowly disintegrating from the inside out.

I say this because I know the fear: I worry every day that I’m lazy, and I’m tired of it.

We’re all doing the best we can. You are doing the best you can. You are doing an amazing job. You are not lazy in the slightest.

Keep going. You’re doing great.

Make it mythic,

P.S. I have a guest post over on Beth’s lovely Little Red Tarot site today, called Running a Flourishing Business (Despite Chronic Illness). Please do check it out.