Lazy

Sketch a day - day 58/365

One of the ways I like to work is to wake, go pee, and then come back to sit in bed and read and write ideas as they form.

I feel a little ashamed about this way of working. Because it not only looks like I haven't got up, in reality, it's abundantly clear I totally have not got up.

I am in bed.

Reading, thinking, writing, sometimes doing email. But usually just jotting ideas about things I want to write or am writing.

This is work. And yet it is also work that is not performed. It is done in exactly the way I want to do it. It feels absolutely right, but - perhaps because work should feel difficult to be deemed worthwhile? - I feel guilty about it.

And I fear that it is a way of working that others would deem shabby, artsy fartsy, grubby, inefficient, an indication of just what is wrong with people who have had an arts education, cunty, slatternly, up myself, twatsish, pretentious and very worst of all deeply lazy.

Because I know from childhood that to be lazy is the worst sin of all. Not that I remember anyone saying this out loud. But I know I learnt this.

Laziness is the worst.

So, of course I feel the need to rush to explain that I do not always work like this. That I often get up early and go for a walk/run or go out for meetings. And and and.

I feel the need to explain that I often stay up late, typing into the night.

I feel the need to say that I am grateful that I get to work in ways that I enjoy and upon things I care about.

But what a great big bag of anxious, boring hot air.

Really.

Who cares?

This morning it struck me that the only person who is worried about this, is me.

Anyway, Lara Darling almost always comes and sleeps on my lap when I work in bed.

She isn't impressed when I turn a book page too noisily. She doesn't mind when I write notes as long as I contort myself in such a way that does not disturb her comfort, in any way.

She grumbles if I put on music. Unless it is something appropriately gentle &/or classical. Bach & Eric Sattie are acceptable, Michael Kiwanuka receives a ‘if we must’ ear twitch, Chappell Roan, Sly and the Family Stone and/or Kate Bush, in full throws, are not.

Sometimes Lara D has a full on flounce off, only to return once I have sorted myself out and returned the room to silence/stopped turning pages too noisily/stopped writing a long note with a scratchy pen.

And then she just pops back up, muscles her way on, flops down and is almost always asleep before she's taken 3 more breaths.

She simply commits to the thing she is doing, how she wants to do it, for no other reason than because she wants to. And because of that, she does it, and all she does, beautifully.

I thought about that as I stopped to do a quick sketch of her. And yes, she did a little ‘still from inside sleep’ grumble, because she didn't like the sound of the pencil scratching on the paper.

I am ready to be more Lara Darling.

And that's the news.