Can't get awake, in gear, loosened up . . .

Brain. Stopped. Full stop.

Is the attack caused by any specific catalyst, or is it just general malaise? Does it matter? It’s a common enough ailment, to be sure. Something tells me that the cheery “Heigh-ho song” sung by Disney‘s seven dwarves, who ostensibly adore the work to which they’re trooping off for the day, did not purely coincidentally share its signature phrase with the heigh-ho also traditionally used to signify a yawn.

Aye, there’s the rub. I’m merely revealing my attitude toward anything I might label WORK. With a perpetually growing agenda of chores and deeds of doing, if not derring, always in front of me, perhaps my personal catalyst in this moment is merely the ennui of the congenitally lazy. Dear me, I probably shouldn’t even use the word congenital, since although it only denotes a condition that existed in me from–or before–birth, it should in no way be construed as deriving genetically. Not my parents’ doing, this disease of mine. I come from a sturdy line of hard working people, really I do, captains of industry in carpentry and grocery marketing and education and ministry and homemaking and dental hygiene and nursing and technology and administration and so many other productive and socially significant and uplifting fields. It’s hard to imagine that anyone deriving from that lineage could possibly be born unwilling to move and desirous of nothing more than to be indolently comfortable without any regard to my deserving.

But here we are. The very sight of a tool lying in wait of its use, a To-Do list leering suggestively at me, or the admittedly messy appearance of something that clearly needs to be Fixed can send me into a syncope of delicate avoidance. Come and revive me from my fainting couch if you must, but do so at your peril. Yes, my everlasting soul–at the very least, my reputation as a responsible adult–is at high risk of the eternal red-inked F of effing disapproval. But is it worth what might happen if, say, you rouse me from a pleasant torpor or my clearly much-needed beauty sleep before, oh, noon-ish? Dare you risk it? Even I am terrified of me when I haven’t had my requisite sleep.

But let us return to the problem of how to get anything accomplished at all when the mere thought of effort is anathema to me. The easy answer is to trick me into thinking that the task at hand is fun. The hard part of the equation, of course, is how to make more than a few very rare tasks seem fun, but I am dependent on the cleverness of others for accomplishing that part of the process as often as possible. Shaming me into doing the right thing almost never works; apparently I have a truly limited capacity for self-criticism except in places where it can be reliably unproductive, for example when it depends on elements of my self and behavior that can’t be altered anyway. Keeping my work schedule pared back to the nearly-manageable smallest number and lowest quantity possible is always a wise move on the part of any who are dim enough to have Expectations of me.

All of this is not to say that I don’t like to DO anything, though my list might be more circumscribed than some, nor that I’m a completely curmudgeonly person just to be around. It’s more that my preferred things-to-do are often those considered less useful on a grand scale, less utilitarian, than what the world might rather ask of me. Indeed, I’m quite the happy (if not grossly self-satisfied, depending on whom you ask and when) person and have a very cheery outlook for the most part, especially when I can hit that sweet spot of having, however accidentally or fortuitously, managed to think I was just having a good old time and at the end of it discovered that I got useful or important or even just practical stuff done. That constitutes something close to perfection in a day.

So go ahead. Con me into being my better self and you will have not only my congratulations on your ingenious ways but my thanks, and those of all others benefitting from it, for getting me to get something done in spite of my natural inclination toward repose. Even my sleepy, constipated brain can wrap around a nice concept like that!

A good idea can go all pear-shaped, or if you're lucky, instead it bears fruit.