Lazy Self-Care Days!
Hello my lovely tribe and welcome to another Self-Care Sunday! We’re goig talk about the things that we can do to make our selves feel good, pampered, and loved.
Today we’re going to talk about lazy days!
Yes, I spoke the blasphemous “L” word. Lazy, lazy, lazy, say it with me. LAZY.
If you are like me, then the thought of doing nothing for a whole day, or even just an afternoon, fills you with “But I have this to do… and this… and this…” It actually makes me feel anxious. It feels “wrong”. The only time I actually spend any significant amount of time relaxing in bed is when I am in the depths of depression.
Which tells me that it’s one of the ways I heal. One of the ways I get in touch with me. It’s one of my medicine tools. It is so healing to have quiet time, to get in touch with ourselves without a ton of distractions and things to do.
It’s okay to do nothing.
So here’s what I want you to do. Pick a day (or if you insist a morning/afternoon/evening) where you don’t have much to do and plan those things for some other time. They can wait. Get into your comfiest pajamas (if they are a bit tattered and mismatched you get extra points) and then relax, be lazy. Listen to music, play video games (World of Warcraft is my go-to lazy day activity). If you have children and it’s the weekend then all of you can stay in your pajamas, reading, watching cartoons, playing board games, eating pizza!
Stay in bed allowing yourself to doze, spend time painting or writing without worrying about time constraints, order delivery or takeout food, or live on sandwiches for the day!
Do what requires the least amount of effort and don’t worry about the other stuff. It’s okay to relax.
Well, since I’m just recovering from post college burnout at home, I’m forced to have lazy self-care days everyday, even if I want to work immediately and accomplish as many things as possible. Though usually on lazy days, I enjoy video games, I read comic books, specifically manga, (Japanese comic books), listen to rock and broadway music, write in my journal, daydream, listen to podcasts, or follow mental health information online. I enjoy for example, Cinema Therapy on YouTube, where two best friends, one is a therapist and the other is a filmmaker, introduce psychology ideas through movies. I also know the podcast Harry Potter and the Sacred Text, where Harry Potter is analyzed chapter by chapter through a spiritual lens, where basically they pick a value like forgiveness or kindness, and explain how each chapter talks about it. (Looking up, Harry Potter podcasts, there are surprisingly a lot of them I might get into.) In video games, I’m just mostly into Assassin’s Creed (the entire series), Legend of Zelda, and God of War. How do I get over the guilt of being lazy? I don’t know. I just feel it and ignore what it wants me to do, because there’s no other choice.
The key to not feeling guilty for relaxing is to take these lazy self-care days when I visit my mom over winter break. Then, I spend all day being cozy in my pajamas and fuzzy socks by the fireplace, watching Hallmark movies while the snow swirls softly outside the window, lighting Yuletide scented candles and listening to holiday Celtic music, curling up with my purring cat and a good book to read by the glow of the Christmas tree, drinking peppermint hot cocoa, and eating way too many sugar cookies.