DSM-IV* (Clinical Syndromes) CBA (not otherwise specified)

(* Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition)

I have spent an inordinate amount of time over the last few days reading other peoples’ blogs. Shame on me, when I should have (could have) been writing my own. But the thing is, there are loads of them out there, and I keep stumbling across them when I’m looking for other things, and some of them turn out to be really pretty interesting, and just a teensy bit addictive. Clearly I have too much time on my hands.

Which brings me to my next point.

Although I really enjoy reading about what other people are doing, the experience invariably leaves me languishing beneath a slumpy smother of guilt. These guys whose blogs have filled my wasted weekend are just so energetic, and so busy. They get SO MUCH DONE. They build things, they create things, they visit places, they know things, they socialise, and they write about it in their blogs. And they do it all whilst also looking after small children, big animals, or sick and aged relatives. They have big ambitions on small (or even no) incomes and they achieve so much. Whereas I, by unhelpful comparison, only just about manage to keep up with the minimum of the daily chores. As for all the rest of it, well, I just mostly Can’t Be Arsed.

Now my Can’t Be Arsedness has been a feature of my life for as long as I can remember. And it makes me weary. Anyone who possesses a modicum of physical energy and mental inclination to Get Stuff Done would probably not believe just how tiring Not Being Arsed is. It can really take it out of you.

I’m beginning to suspect that Not Being Arsed creates some weird chemical reaction in your brain that depresses neural activity and disconnects your body from your mind, so that even though you can easily think of Really Interesting and Productive Things that you’d very much like to do, your body Just Says No…. “No thanks – I’ll just stay slumped slightly uncomfortably in this chair, part way between relaxed and numb, without moving anywhere”. A bit like being stoned, only without the fun.

The only way to combat it seems to be through trickery. If my brain can pretend that my body needs to get up for just a minute to do this one, tiny little thing that will use hardly any energy at all, I can generally manage to keep moving with just one more little thing, and then just one more…and so on, until the bare essentials have somehow got done. But I dare not stop. Once I sit down again, the Can’t Be Arsedness washes over me in a big wave of torpor, and I am lost.

I’m not entirely sure that it matters, of course. Yes, I’d like to have the house decorated, and tidy and nice, and the barn to be clean and empty, and made homely with fresh straw to be a winter shelter for the chilly llamas. I’d like to have a flock of young fruit trees planted in the orchard-to-be, and the stream to be prettily manicured with magical ponds, surrounded by newly planted willows and bluebell bulbs. I’d like to have all the junk cleared out of the loft, and have all the remaining boxes organised and labelled, and properly sealed against the dust and cobwebs.

But, hey, I’d also like to just sit here for a few more minutes and finish reading this post about the guy who is trying to get planning permission for an eco-friendly yurt camp in the Dordogne. Or maybe read the book Simon got me for Christmas called ‘A Portrait of the Brain’. Or, in fact, to just sit here a few more minutes and do anything other than actually get up and DO something productive.

I did vaguely wonder whether maybe I should use some of my infallible wishing powers to wish to be More Arsed, if you see what I mean. But then I thought maybe the Zen thing to do is to simply deal with the guilt instead.

And then I thought, since I’m sitting here with the world of the Internet at my lazy fingertips, I might just google ‘Can’t Be Arsed’ and see where that leads me. And here’s one of the interesting things I discovered….

Can’t be arsed
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wikipedia does not have an encyclopedia article for Can’t be arsed.
You may want to read Wiktionary’s entry on “Can’t be arsed” instead.

Well. Now, there’s a surprise. But, hang on! Here’s a Really Interesting Idea for Something Productive I could do. I could write the missing Wikipedia article!!

But then again………