Are You A Slacker?
I’ll admit, I have been a slacker most of my life. It is literally only in the last eight months that I have changed that behavior. I recently read an article in The New York Times about Generation X or anyone who was born between 1965 and 1980. I am a member of Generation X and one of our ‘characteristics’ is notoriously being slackers.
I agree with this statement. I spent most of my life doing the least amount of work I could possibly get away with to get things done. It started in high school. My freshman year I stopped caring about school for some reason. I did nothing but managed to maintain a B average. This stayed the same until I hit my junior year and decided that I needed to get into a good college.
But then again, after I got into college, I was back on the slacker train. I did horribly my senior year of high school because at that time colleges did not look at your senior grades. I almost failed calculus and had absolutely no clue what was going in A.P. physics.
In college, I was an English major. Let’s be real, how many of us did all the readings? I only read the books I found interesting. Forgive me but I never read Great Expectations. Honestly, I didn’t read many things I was supposed to. I admitted to my professor in grad school that I had never read Jane Eyre and she was shocked. She thought it was an abomination. She claimed my writing would suffer.
Here is my argument. We only read books by rich dead white people. I liked to read diverse books from diverse authors. Yes, I may have robbed myself of part of my education, but I actually don’t care. If I thought it would make me a better writer I would read Jane Eyre right here and now. But I’m not going to waste my time. I don’t think I’m too good to read the classics, but I don’t think the classics are as important as educators make them. I think they are often about a rich, white world.
I even slacked off my first year in grad school. I was manically depressed, so there is that. But I managed to pass the pass/fail grades. The second year I really worked my ass off because I cared about my writing and I was blossoming as a writer. After that, I slacked off for a couple of years, not sure what I was going to do with my life and suffered from depression and mania.
But when I had to turn in my Master’s thesis, I worked like a dog day and night to finish that thing. So see, I wasn't a slacker when it mattered. I just would try to get away with the least amount of work for any said project. Why was I a slacker you ask?
First of all, let’s face it if you can get away with minimal work, why not do it? That was my attitude throughout most of my life. Secondly, I suffered from depression on and off most of my adult life. When you are depressed you become a slacker by default. When I was not depressed I was catching up on the things I didn’t do when I was. It’s a vicious cycle. When I taught in college I always did my grades and graded papers at the last minute. Always. It made my life stressful. The dread of the work was worse than the work itself.
So how and why did I change that slacker habit in the last eight months? My main motivation is that I’m not depressed anymore. I was never a lazy person per se. I do enjoy relaxing, I’m not going to lie. But I have realized that if I want to get to my goals, I have to work, very hard. That’s the only way I’m losing weight and getting my books published. Even maintaining this blog on a daily basis is a lot of work.
I’ve never been happier with my work life though. Working hard gives me satisfaction that I cannot describe. I feel accomplished, productive, and successful. Things in my life are moving in the right direction, finally. Life is good, on a consistent basis, because I work at it.
I work on my mind, body, and soul. I make myself meditate for an hour every morning. Trust me, a lot of times I don’t want to. I force myself to write every day, many days I don’t feel like it. But I do it anyways. I try to work out as often as I can and I eat as healthy as I can. Just doing the work, is the best thing I ever did for myself.
This is the only way I will get to my goals. I do not want to be one of those writers who become famous after they are dead. I cannot and will not let that happen. I have to become a respected author now. Now is the only time to do the work.
I’m not sure exactly how I flipped a switch on my entire personality and gave up slacking. Don’t get me wrong, I still love sitting by the dock of the bay and shooting the shit. It’s my favorite thing in life to do. But I am in the prime of my life and if I want to get to my goals, I have to do the work.
I will mention this phrase again: Sometimes you just have to chop wood and carry water. It’s a Buddhist phrase and it means there are times when you just have to do the work. I will tell you when those times are. Every time. If you want to get anywhere in life, you have to do the work.
My parents have the best work ethic that I have ever known. They were both first in their classes and that is how they made it to America and succeeded. For some reason, I didn’t pick up on that work ethic when I was growing up, but it has suddenly crept into me. Immigrants work hard because they know they have to in order to get the same things that citizens get.
I am the child of immigrants and I have finally started acting like it. That does not mean I will read Jane Eyre. It means that I will read something every single day. I am not going to skimp out on life anymore. Yeah, I got away with slacking, but it only goes so far. Trust me. I had to change or otherwise, I would go nowhere.
So if you are a fellow slacker, I just left the club.
Let me tell you what it’s like on the other side.
nina