AM I LAZY OR JUST TOTALLY UNMOTIVATED?

 

Image courtesy of Shannon Wheeler.

Is there a fine line between unmotivated and lazy, or does one just lead to the other?  Honestly, I don't know.  I do know that when I have something to do or undertake a project, I go at it full pelt.  Having something to do motivates me.  Finding something to do, however, now that I'm retired and don't have to work, is difficult.  At first, I'd try to find useful things to do to fill my day and, not finding enough, had guilt trips.  What is the point of living if you're not contributing in some way?

This line of thinking became rather tiresome and just led to anxiety as well as to the mindset of digging my heels in and not wanting to do anything, because I was pressuring myself too much.  I've pressured myself all my life and I'm fed up with it.  When am I allowed to do absolutely nothing without guilt?  I know that if I did manage to, I would go stir crazy with boredom anyway.

I will not consider taking up cleaning my house to Good Housekeeping standards to justify my existence.  That is mind numbing stuff.  I do the basics, I'm tidy and hygienic but that is all.  Dust and I, for instance, barely acknowledge one another.  One day when my six-year-old grand-daughter was visiting, she flung herself on our loungeroom ottoman.  To my absolute amazement, a cloud of dust rose up around her.  Her mother was witness to this fantastic sight and so I resolved to vacuum it without further ado.  Every now and then, I also put my glasses on when I am indoors and see the layers of dust on my furniture and force myself to wipe every surface.  It always surprises me when the dust comes back.  It's funny stuff.  You just don't really see it in the air, but it's there.

It occurs to me that it is difficult to do absolutely nothing when you are at home as it is seen as lazy as opposed to being relaxed.  In order to get away with it, one must really be on vacation or on a trip.  This way, sitting around reading a book all day or watching television is condoned.  After all, you're on holiday.  I don't really have the funds for either lately so I must do these things at home, where I will be judged.  Vacations and trips can also prove taxing if you are travelling and must move from one place to the other and take organized tours.  These require effort.  It's an effort that I'm absolutely prepared to take if it's an excursion to the Greek Isles or the Pyramids in Egypt, but not if it's bus trips to places of total disinterest domestically during which people might decide to have singalongs between towns.

I have written about boredom in other blogs and also about hobbies.  In truth, the only thing that really interests me is writing and, sometimes reading, if I can find a good book.  The latter is also difficult.  I have taken to borrowing books from the library again in the last six months. I have read many good books in my time but finding one lately is becoming a quest.  I have read the newly released novels of two well-known crime writers and been appalled.  It is as if they are now being ghost written.  I know this can happen, as I've spoken to a woman who worked in publishing.  I was expressing to her my surprise and disbelief that a particular author managed to bring out a new novel every year in time for Christmas.  I was also amazed that he hadn't died of old age.  She told me that publishers often employed ghost writers to fill in the novels of best-selling authors after the authors themselves wrote the whole plot line.  The ghost writers copy the author's style and fill out the manuscript.

No wonder then, that it's hard for new authors to get a break in the industry, especially as publishers must compete with the internet and online publishing.  Unfortunately, although that resource allows new authors to publish, we miss out on the marketing and advertising that publishers take on for an author.  It is expensive and that is why we want to be accepted by them in the first place.

When I go into my local library, the newly released novels will have little stamps on them like, "Staff's top picks", meaning the library staff.  Most of them also boast, "New York Time's Bestseller".  When I come to that last one now, I go straight past the book.  As sure as it has that label, I will hate it.  I can't believe the dross I have picked up in these last six months.  I have read in this time a couple of new, young female authors, who are both listed in their blurbs as having done creative writing courses at elite universities.  I could tell within the first chapters they had undertaken writing courses as their writing was formulaic.

This isn't sour grapes.  Good luck to them for being published, but I don't want to read what they write.  It was also immature and fit for Cosmopolitan Magazine fiction.  I have, happily, found one author whom I really like.  Kate Atkinson is an English author who can go off on so many tangents, with so many well drawn characters, that I completely lose myself.  I've read five of hers in a row now and need a little break.  I'm also running out of her novels.  A novelist needs to have a unique voice, not one gained from doing a writing course.  There is no template for a novel.  The rule basically is that it needs to have a beginning, a middle and an end with a resolution.  I'm sure some novelists have played with these rules, but then, it depends how artfully they do it.

I've been told by a literary agent, who I phoned for advice, that my latest novel is, 'too long'.  My thoughts are, 'Well, how long is a piece of string?  As long as it needs to be."   She said, "No, it's the publishing costs".   Apparently, that wasn't a consideration with Tolstoy's, "War and Peace", or Margaret Mitchell's, "Gone with the Wind".  Going over one hundred thousand words is not a good idea these days.  Also, she told me that one needs a social media presence and followers.  At this point, I decided to stick with Amazon Publishing.  I'd already reduced the manuscript by thirty thousand words, and I wasn't reducing it anymore.

There is a book I recommend reading regarding Artificial Intelligence and writing and it is, "The Well of Lost Plots" by Jasper Fforde published in 2003.  It is fantasy fiction but very relevant today where AI is writing essays and business letters and the like for people.  In "The Well of Lost Plots", authors are at risk of losing their jobs because a computer program will take over writing novels and the people of BookWorld, a world inhabited by characters from fiction, must fight to save their own lives.  That's a very loose explanation of the plot, however, the novel is very clever and, I thought at the time of reading, very far-sighted.

It is, therefore, also hard to be motivated when I see writing that I personally find uninspiring being published because it will sell easily.  There is also a lot of dross on the Amazon Book site but, because of its sheer size, there are also many good books.  I'm sure many people read the books on Amazon with covers showing men with six pack abdomens and adoring women draped around them, but there are all sorts of novels, including the classics.  Don't always go by the star ratings.  I think people get paid to pump up ratings and some very odd novels have five stars.  You just need the patience to peruse the millions of books on the site and sort the wheat from the chaff.

I now return to my quest to motivate myself into useful occupation or enjoy the sheer abundance, and lack of it, of choice in retirement.

END

HOBBIES, OR HOW TO BE BORED PRODUCTIVELY.

The top of my faux Marquetry box

When I was a child, I found it easy to keep occupied.  If I wasn't at school, I would play with dolls, play make-believe and draw prolifically.  Outside I would do headstands, handstands and cartwheels on our expansive lawn.  The rest of the time I was up our jacaranda tree, which had four trunks with numerous forks to perch in and pretend I was in a castle.  I climbed this tree for years, hung from its branches by my arms or legs and never, not once, fell from it.  We had another jacaranda, but it was larger, with a single trunk and not suitable for climbing.  It was too big and, when I did venture up it, I would receive large welts from hairy caterpillars that burned and stung.

As I grew, I started roller skating on our, also, expansive concrete areas.  We had no fences in our neighbourhood and I would skate over to my cousin's house two doors over.  We did build a billycart to ride down the concrete driveway that led to the road by the bay, but it was long, steep and somewhat perilous.  We would also hike through the lantana to the abandoned house next door on the other side of our property.  We never encountered a snake but often ended up with ticks.

My father gave me an old box brownie when I was seven and taught me how to develop film and make prints in black and white.  I gave that up some years later when I was given an instamatic. 

The sad thing about adulthood is that, apart from drawing and photography, most of the activities I undertook are the preserve of children.  We must find other ways to occupy ourselves in our leisure time when we grow up.  Many people turn to creative pursuits, while others challenge their bodies with exercise, hiking, climbing, biking and different sports.

I'm not that into sports, although I love tennis and want to take up golf again.  The trouble is, now that I'm retired, I have to fill every day.  When I became an adult, I discovered that I had a propensity to extreme boredom, to the extent that I can be bored while actually doing something.  Plenty of people can be bored while they are working, but that depends on their job and the same goes for me, but I have to be really involved in what I'm doing to not experience boredom.

As such, over the course of my adult life, I have attempted numerous creative pastimes to fill the void in my leisure time.  Of course, if I am travelling somewhere, I am never bored, but I lack the money these days to go anywhere different often enough.  Only writing and travelling assuage my boredom.

The other day, I was pondering just how many crafts I have tried in order to find my passion.  I believe I started shortly after I married with macrame.  Then I tried string art.  I made a few nice gifts with these but then gave them up.  I also tried my hand at pottery.  It didn't excite me one bit.

After that I completely renovated a house: making curtains, wallpapering, painting, putting laminate on bench tops, making vanity units from scratch (former husband is a dab hand at carpentry, as his father was one, and he taught me the basics).  I tiled a floor and the kitchen wall above the benches.  I should have stuck with renovating, but I wanted a proper job.  Pity, we sold the house for twice what we bought it after one year and I did most of the work as husband was at his job.

Throughout my childhood and adolescence, I had become very good at drawing and portraits in pencil thanks to having a father who was an artist.  In my twenties, in order to get into a college to study Industrial Design, I did two extremely good portraits in pastel as they wanted an example of my artistic ability.  Strangely, they never asked to see them.  I got into the course, but soon dropped out, however, I still treasure the two portraits, one of which I have and the other belongs to my former husband.

Why, you ask, didn't I continue to do more?  Because I am like a Mexican jumping bean and can't settle.  Besides, I wanted to write, and it still took me ten years to get around to writing my first novel.  When I became pregnant, I took classes in watercolour.  I have really never been into painting.  I also tried floristry.  I should include sewing as a hobby, but I have been able to sew since I was a teenager, making some of my own clothes, and this has continued throughout my life.  I also used to knit.  I love knitting but I have jumpers, both bought and made, that are thirty years old because in Queensland, although it can get cold, it does not get thick jumper cold often enough to warrant it.

Through the years I have tried decoupage, folk art and fake marquetry using paint.  This has left me with some nice bits and pieces.

I have made simple loose cushion covers for chair seats and, after that, took the bit between my teeth and reupholstered the seats of my parents' dining chairs.  This required disassembly, new webbing, fabric, cording and a staple gun.  I was very proud of this achievement but don't wish to make it a pastime.  I have eyed my armchair recliner that needs recovering but, having read the mechanics of disassembly, don't want to lose my fingers or wreck my back.  This will have to be a job for a professional.

A reupholstered dining chair

Most recently, since retiring, apart from looking for lucrative, or any, employment, I have tried to learn a new craft so that I can sell something alongside my partner at craft markets.  He has become a masterful leather worker and makes truly beautiful leather handbags for men and women, wallets, and belts.  I feel ashamed that I cannot channel myself to a task with his sheer concentration and all-consuming passion.  He has learned everything he can and will work into the wee hours of the night.

In my quest to sell something beside him at markets, I have tried putting images on candles.  There are two ways to do this.  One way is easy if you can find the right materials, but then the plastic on which the image is printed may give off harmful fumes when the candle burns.  It looks great though.  The second way involves printing the image on tissue paper and attaching it to the candle using a hair dryer or a heat gun to melt it on.  No fume problem here but watch out for your hands under the dryer.  Looks good, but not as good as the other way.  I now have a surplus of white pillar candles.

Next, I learned how to make lampshades.  Not just to recover lampshades, but to make them.  This took some research and Youtubing, and then the more difficult task of finding a certain product to stick the chosen fabric to in order to stiffen it.  It turned out that this wasn't a cheap hobby, but I have two beautiful new lampshades for my exquisite Chinese red, ginger jar shaped lamps bought in Hong Kong forty years ago.  Making lampshades to order, however, may prove problematic, and I'm still thinking about it.

My lampshade

Meantime I have made three little, simple leather frog stuffed toys for my grandchildren.  They managed to damage a cotton one I had that they played with, so I copied it in leather and stuffed it with rice.  I've also sold two at markets, but they are very unwieldy to make.

The list of things people take up as hobbies is endless, and one person's passion is another person's yawn.  The list of hobbies is endless but the ones I haven't tried, I wouldn't want to try as I've thought of every possible one so far and ruled out those that don't appeal to me.

I'm taking a short break from hobby seeking to push my latest novel to literary agents and publishers.  I really need another house to renovate.

END

RIBBIT