HOW TO | Get your lazy on.

Photo by Nik MacMillan on Unsplash

It’s just not right.

Instead of spending our weekends doing as the good lord intended (you know, watching TV, playing video games, eating vast amounts of cheese), these days weekends are all about work (both capitalistic, and horribly mundanely domestic), like paying bills, washing dishes, and doing the laundry. It’s depressing.

When did this happen? When did our spare time become the property of The Man? Spare time is supposed to be just that: spare.

As in extra, excess … free.

It’s supposed to be our own.

So why not take it back?

Dose proposes that you spend an entire weekend doing … absolutely nothing.

We mean it. Do nothing! That is, nothing productive, nothing of consequence, nothing time sensitive, nothing out of obligation, and nothing that requires even the remotest bit of undue effort. Have the laziest weekend ever. Now, it’s not going to be easy. (Oh wait, yes it is!) But even so, a little instruction never hurt anyway.

How to have the laziest weekend ever, a guide:

FRIDAY NIGHT

6:00 PM: Change immediately into sweat pants. Style doesn’t matter on the laziest weekend ever. Elasticized waists and ankles are not only allowed, they are most-definitely encouraged.

7:00 PM: Resist the urge to put your discarded work wear in to the hamper. Like you, all the clothes in your apartment are going to spend the laziest weekend ever, lying where they fell.

8:00 PM: Skip the bar and stay home to get into the spirit of pure lethargy. Watching some television if you like, but beware of programming along the lines of Joan of Arcadia and 7^th Heaven. Fridays are the night TV forgot.

9:00 PM: Go to bed early. You have a lot of nothing to do tomorrow!

SATURDAY

9:00 AM: Awake already? You’re obviously not taking this whole lazy weekend thing very seriously. Go to your room and think about what you’ve done.

11:00 AM: Allow yourself a brief foray outside of the bedroom to gather snacks and supplies. Magazines, chocolate, and drinks are always good, and in case you’re wondering, sex is also allowed (though not encouraged, and not in combination with any of the previously gathered items, which would be way too much work).

12:00 NOON: If you have one, con your partner into giving you a back rub. Feign sleep so you won’t have to reciprocate. Bonus: you may actually fall asleep again. It’s okay! Napping makes you pretty.

2:00 PM: Saturdays offer a virtual smorgasbord of lazy entertainment options. From sports, to VH1 countdowns, celebrity gossip shows, sweet reruns of The Golden Girls. Spend the afternoon on the sofa. You’re allowed to read or nap again if your brain starts melting, but try to remember your goal is to be still. To veg. To lie still, like vegetables.

5:00 PM: Contact your pals. Tell your friends that you’re hosting a “super-fun movie marathon night”. (YES, MORE SCREEN TIME!) Get them to pick up the movies … and the food. Being truly lazy is partly about manipulating those you love. When they arrive, don’t offer to get up. Hopefully they’ll leave and you’ll have free take-out and plenty of movies to tide you over till Monday.

6:00 PM: Watch movies you conned your pals into bringing over. Leave the take-out containers on the living room floor. Rats are highly unlikely to arrive before you clean up on Monday. Fall asleep in front of the TV.

SUNDAY

9:00 AM: Have you learned nothing? Sleep you unnaturally-active freak, sleep!

12:00 NOON: If you’re going stir-crazy, allow yourself a trip to your local coffee shop. Don’t change out of the sweat pants! Getting dressed would be work and you know how Jesus hates that, especially on Sunday, the Lord’s day.

1:00 PM: Drink your coffee and watch all the productive cogs and worker monkeys go about their business. Feel superior.

2:00 PM: Spend the afternoon surfing the web, playing video games, watching more TV, or if you’re bad at this, reading an actual book. Take a really long bath if you want. If you like, call up everyone you know to tell them what a great, relaxing weekend you’ve had. Be long-winded about it.

5:00 PM: Sunday evening, already? Just kidding. At this point, I’m sure the laziness is wearing thin and the nothing has become exhausting. Pat yourself on the back. You made it through a full weekend of pure laziness.

Oddly enough, this whole experiment may not have been as fabulous as you imagined. In fact, Monday might be looking pretty good right now, am I right?

And that’s exactly the point.

2018: Whelp. I hope you enjoyed this. Yet another ridiculous trash piece that I actually wrote for work, because a bunch of bros who were my bosses told me to. This one was filler copy for Dose, pre-launch, spring 2005. It pre-dated Netflix as we now know it, and certainly the idea of Netflix and chill. Not knowing what else to do, I’ve filed this under the culture and trends tag, which is a bit lofty, but hey. It had to go somewhere.