Working vs. Lazy

Oh goodness, what a couple of days it's been. Soon I can tell you guys everything that's going on, but in a nutshell - I have the chance to expand and at the same time constrict.

It's been extremely confusing for me and here is a lot of the reason why:

My own personal thoughts on my work habits.

Really.

I realize lately it's all about busting open the personal myths on this blog, but I really am blasting through them one by one and this one shocked me actually, it took me about 6 days to realize what the problem was and now I know.

My whole life I have considered myself lazy. It's a family myth really, we're all lazy in my house. There is nothing more the Hixx family likes to do than retreat to the television and hide away. It's a dangerous thing to tell yourself your whole life, it really is. I remember first dating John and talking about how lazy I was and he would be shocked, telling me that no no no, you're not lazy at all. I don't think I really listened.

Then when Chicago Elevated stuff started happening, I really felt like I was working, hard. But not too hard, because what's inherent in the creation of Chicago Elevated is that less work can be done for a great payoff. Inherent.

Then something came along and it sounds pretty and nice but it requires a TON of work on my part. A lot. Of work. My first thoughts were fear, then a resignation that right, I'm still not working that hard. What's wrong with me working that hard? I should work that hard. Work should consume me, this is what I'm going for, this is what I'm doing.

The back and forth went on for a few days, me not wanting to work like that (and me assuming this was "laziness" on my part) and me revving myself up to work REALLY hard. I was driving myself crazy, wondering why on earth I couldn't make a decision. I'm really sure about a lot of Chicago Elevated and trust myself completely when it comes to my business, but this, this was making me crazy.

Then I called my guru, Izzo and left a message. I was in such a state. As soon as I left a really frantic message it all fell away. Wait wait wait wait wait WAIT. The reason for my frantic-ness is because I was talking myself into doing something I didn't really want to do and the reason was mostly because it would require hard work. And hard work is what I needed.

Bullshit. I called bullshit on myself. So much of what Chicago Elevated was born on was me working hard, but me also not working so hard. It was meant to give my life flexibility, to travel, to create, to enjoy a summer day, to write, to learn, to give tours...

I am not lazy. I am brilliant.

I will not waste my life working my ass off for something that wasn't even part of my plan to begin with and a nice shiny penny was waved in front of my face and I almost took it, even though I have plenty of pennies that maybe need a little shining up.

I work hard. I work really hard. Part of the joy of my job is that I enjoy it, a lot of it doesn't feel like work, some of it does, most of it doesn't. And that is not laziness, that is being an excellent entrepreneur.

Lazy my ass.