Member-only story
SELF-CARE
The Terrible Allure of Laziness
My new drug of choice.
I knew I’d hit a wall. But it’s not the kind of wall you see coming a long way off in the distance. It’s not the Great Wall of China, crawling with tourists and visible from space.
It’s more like a wall from a James Bond movie. Or maybe Wile E. Coyote. It’s a wall that shoots up from the road right in front of you with zero warning.
I’m learning to love the wall. The wall gives me permission to lay in bed without moving for hours at a time, listening to the birds and feeling my dog’s eyes bore into me.
The other day she hopped onto the bed and started smacking me with her paw. This is her primary form of communication. The paw wakes me up at 3:00 in the morning because she wants under the covers. The paw tells me that petting should commence ASAP, or alternatively, that a bone should be dispensed.
The paw is the only thing motivating me at the moment, because this star ship is running on auxiliary power only.
When you’re young, you assume that if you die in the next ten years, it will be in a car accident, or a mass shooting, or a plane crash. Something violent and newsworthy.
