The Value of Laziness (or Creativity is Too Much Work!)

October 15, 2010


I read an article a few weeks ago about how a woman was loaded with stress about cooking dinner, and her mother told her to stop trying to cook trendy meals during the week and get back to basics—meatloaf, stew, etc.

OK, one thing my family has never had to worry about is me stressing over a trendy dinner. I’m as willing to throw a mushroom into the stroganoff as the next guy, but sun-dried tomatoes and I don’t even have a nodding acquaintance. And I buy my spaghetti, I don’t make it.

I’ve always been sad that I’m not more creative. But since I’ve read so many of these articles, I think I might have been luckier than I realized. People stress over the darndest things.

When somebody asked what my “theme” was going to be for the baby’s room, I looked at her like she had two heads. I said, “I’m going to paint the walls pale blue, and change the bedding and curtains as the kid gets older.” (This was before she was born, and I didn't know if I was having a boy or a girl. It just seemed like the simplest thing to do.)

Truth be told, I never even got around to painting the room blue—but she loved all the Winnie-the-Pooh accessories.

Sure enough, a year later I read an article about how you should just keep things simple, and maybe update the bedding and curtains as the child aged.

And when she was starting on baby food, I took her shirt off at mealtimes, figuring it would be easier to wipe her down than to keep trying to get food stains out of her clothes. And then I saw the same suggestion in a book.

And so on. Maybe I’m impaired, maybe I’m just bone-lazy. But I’m not stressed.

So my point is, if you’re creative, God bless you. But don’t stress about it. Think about how much happier your family is with an un-crabby you, than with a creative creature who’s stressed out to the max.

Now, go make some meatloaf.