Imagine standing in a courtroom and hearing that you’ve been charged and found GUILTY of doing nothing. Clearly that’s ridiculous. So why is it that when I find myself doing ‘nothing’ (like say binging a TV box set or reading a magazine with a brew), I suddenly feel a tremendous guilt?
I think about little jobs I can complete so that when my husband comes home and says “what have you done today?”, I can justify my time well spent. I think about returning to work tomorrow, and what I’ll say if I’m asked what I did yesterday. I conclude that, “put a wash on, and… well…., you know…., sat on my arse most of the day”, probably doesn’t make me sound like the windswept and interesting kind of girl I want to be.
To be clear, my husband doesn’t give two shits if I’ve sat about on my day off, because he would do exactly the same. My colleagues would probably say, “That sounds like heaven. Good for you.” The problem is totally in my head. The guilt comes from me, and my absolute phobia of being…. lazy *shudders*, like that’s the worse thing to be accused of.
I spend the working week looking at the many jobs that need doing and think ‘I’ll do that at the weekend’. Then at the weekend I think, “Why should I spend my weekend doing chores? Weekends are for family time and seeing friends, or just chilling out. I know – I’ll do that on my day off.”
Today is my day off. Between school runs I have just over five hours. Five precious hours to catch up on everything that I’ve put off. I’ve almost done the second coat of paint on the shed. I’ve almost tidied the shithole of our office / dumping ground. I’ve almost been for a run. I even thought about going to IKEA while it’s quiet. But I haven’t actually done any of those things.
“Unbalanced Woman you are accused of doing NOTHING, how do you plead?”
“Guilty as fuck, your Honour.”
Unbalanced Woman 