The Lazy Guide to Unpacking
Lazy Tip #1: Unpacking is very much like Living.You have an open luggage in front of you. Probably all messed up – full of memories, tokens and half-ruined polaroid shots which still bear traces of an extraordinary time. It’s full of that ardent desire to seek more adventure, to plan, equipped with new lessons learnt and fears to overcome. Your job now is to sort out the mess, clean the dirty laundry, proudly showcase your souvenirs and share the traditional goodies with everyone else. To take out that hastily sketched note where you had written tips for your next journey. Some of you get to it quickly and you’ll have everything sorted in one afternoon, ready to start planning new memories all over again. Others though, tend to leave the luggage languishing in the middle of the room. We tell ourselves it’s not about being lazy at all. It’s about savouring it all before everything is put away, the spell is broken and routine ensnares us once more. The sad truth is that it probably is a little of both. We savour, lazily.
THE PROCRASTINATOR
Back to my unpacking/life metaphor of sorts. Just like our open messed up luggage, life is a box of mementos, of dreams and fears. Sometimes it’s easy to just sit back, let routine take over and let our little, big box grow wilder and more tangled, with loose ends left untouched and laces left untied. It’s very easy to live languidly, to let time wash over us. When we leave that luggage lying around too long, the nagging comes next, the tsk-ing, the jostling that luggage around. We procrastinate until “procrastinating” becomes an awfully long word to say for the time that is left to us. Time, the bitch! It lulls us into a perfect little oblivion for a while and then, like the rabbit who realises only too late he had slept for the entire race, we awake with a jolt and speed off. Sometimes this stresses us and forces us to work under pressure – where we probably would excel, given how practised we are at it. We know it is not ideal, we know it could have been tackled much, much better. Unless of course we’ve been using the time wisely. Have I really been savouring that precious fleeting moment or was I just too busy dealing with trivialities and silly matters? When we’re not getting the “main” job done, are we at least enriching ourselves in other ways? When that moment’s over and done and we’re faced with a looming finish line, what will we have to present?
THE GUIDE (A DISCLAIMER)
Before I attempt anything which could be grossly misunderstood, I am not writing about how anyone should live. And no, I won’t even be showing you how best to go about unpacking in the literal sense. No, this series of posts is a list of little tips and tricks I’ve learnt from the many mistakes I made, mostly related to letting everything languish – sometimes (embarrassingly so) to the point of saturation. Quite often, time gave me a false sense of security and, not desiring to look deeper into it, I went along willingly. Sometimes things got better in the nick of time. Then there were instances when things simply faltered and died. Much was learnt that day.Not wanting it to seem like I’m imparting “pearls of wisdom” (as someone might put it – hah!), I’ll refer to them as Unpacking Tips, covering most aspects of what life is actually made up of, be it family, friends, a healthy lifestyle, career, travel, answers to the mysteries of existence – I will try to cover most of what makes life worthwhile. Except maybe that last part. Definitely without that last part.I think it could be fun, if not insightful, to see my life or any other life for that matter, under such a quirky lens.[Just another small disclaimer here – I do not believe I qualify as a lazy person. I may have lazy tendencies and I might occasionally and quite rarely exhibit some lazy attributes but I believe I take things quite seriously. I might need a push every now and again to remain constant but I’m mostly there. And yeah, unpacking is going along just fine.]
LAZY TIP #2: NEVER START WHAT YOU DO NOT INTEND TO FINISH
And that is why we never start anything until we are sure we are not getting out of finishing it. And it’s always so frustrating and a little sad when things are left half done. Not to mention the nagging voice in your head and its disappointed echo. This also brings me to the end of this introductory post. These posts are not aimed at changing your life in any way whatsoever. I am not as presumptuous as that. And there’s nothing wrong with being a bit lazy or a procrastinator for that matter, as long as the job gets done. Do it once, do it well – said every procrastinator ever.Sadly, it wasn’t always the case for me. Which brings me to this: my little Lazy Guide to Unpacking.Feel free to engage yourselves. I love company! Stay Tuned.Oh and yes, Happy New Year! Stay Safe x