Slothful

The creature above, who appears to be giving the camera his version of 'the finger, is a three toed sloth. I suppose that might just be his/her version of the finger, if you only have three fingers/toes who's to say what is the proper way to express your feeling about having your picture taken by some meddlesome jackass with a camera.

Truth is, I don't like having my picture taken either, which is one of the two things I share with the above animal. The second thing is 'sloth' the animal above, for good or bad, has become a synonym for being a lazy bastard. I am not too familiar with the habits of the fellow above, he might be industrious but just slow. However, I am not industrious, nor slow, I am just plain lazy. Which, in many ways, is a terrible, terrible shame. In my previous post, I expressed my amazement that Krudy was about to churn out 17 pages a day of wonderful writing. In the week or so since I wrote that post, I have been thinking about that amazement, and have come to the conclusion that the number is not as amazing as I first believed.

The quantity is still pretty high, and the quality remains miles ahead of anything I could ever put on paper, but I figure that Krudy had a couple of very important advantages, (besides massive amounts of actual talent, which I do not possess). One of those, and perhaps the most important of them, was motivation. Krudy lived by his pen (for the most part at least, sometimes he lived by gambling, and off of admiring women), I live by having an actual job/career which requires my physical presence in my cube, a certain number of hours a week. Those hours either passed by actually doing work, or whiled away wishing I was somewhere, anywhere, else in the world, have a tendency to cut into my writing time.

This previous shackle on my time, also prevents me from living the dissolute live style that Krudy lived. I am doing my dead level best to live the libertine life, but my alarm jolts me awake at 6 a.m. every weekday. That has a chilling effect on my desire to stay out until dawn, drinking myself stupid, and telling my companions 'to come back, and talk some more.' Most of my companions are also gainfully employed, and would not be out drinking until dawn if I paid them, and that is something I am not quite prepared to do. I don't know how much of his output Krudy churned out during those long nights abusing his body with booze, but I suspect that even if he wasn't physically writing down his brilliant words, he was thinking them. I also suspect, that a great deal of his 'material' was found in whichever den of iniquity he was inhabiting.

The relatively few hours I spend in my own dens of iniquity do provide me with a great deal of material as well, though I have yet to learn the 'write this shit down before you get to drunk to remember rule'. There have been any number of blog posts, and 'characters' that have flitted through my life, and my imagination that have been lost to time because of my lack of ambition. Not that I would be able to do them justice, but at least the material would contribute to the 17 page quota that I should be able to meet. Even though I am forced by my economic obligations, and my lack of courage to just throw it all over, run off to Europe, and write or starve, this does not fully exonerate my lack of output.

The second advantage Krudy possess over me is actually more of a disadvantage to me as opposed to an advantage to him. Krudy did not have ESPN, FOX Soccer Channel, Twitter, Facebook, and a myriad of other external time wasters to distract him from his main task of writing. I am sure that he would have dealt with these distractions better than I do, but the fact that they are they is a huge problem for me. Clearly, being a lazy bastard, I can plop my ass down on my couch for hours, and watch American football, futbol, or women's curling without having a single thought worth writing down in my head. It is something that I despair of, but have been unable to control for quite some time.

Common sense tells me I should take the leap, cut the cable, and then just see if I can manage to increase my 'output'. Reality tells me that would last a week before I went crazy from boredom, or just starting spending even more time at a pub that has a Television. This advantage/disadvantage is entirely a product of my time, but it is something that I should be able to overcome. If, as I mentioned before, I wasn't such a lazy bastard. Since I am a lazy bastard, and I also don't take my writing particularly seriously, I am unable to break out of this vicious circle, and 'create' a blog post in a very sporadic fashion. These two issues aren't solely responsible for my lack of output, there is the argument to be made (and it is quite valid) that since I have not spoken aloud to another human being in two whole days, I should have loads, and loads of time on my hands in which to write something down. It is a very valid argument, and one which I have no valid rebuttal except to reiterate that I am a lazy, lazy bastard.


I am not as lucky, or as good a gambler as he was, nor do I have an army of admiring ladies to offer me financial support (amongst other things), but that is no excuse for being a sloth, and I am sure Krudy had his own set of outside distractions that may have lowered his production. I also suspect that, if he were alive, he would tell me to 'quit fucking whining, and get busy writing, or just give it up altogether.' Of course, he would tell me that in Hungarian, and I would probably look at him like he was as mad as a March hare, but in any language the point would be made. The good news is, if there is any good news to be found here, is that I have somehow managed to have turned being lazy into quite a lengthy blog post. I am not sure, since I am an American, but I am willing to believe that this fits the definition of irony.