Honestly? Both.
Lazy days are confusing creatures. They begin like a warm hug and end like an existential crisis. At first, you feel gloriously human — sprawled across the bed, sipping masala chai that’s just the right kind of hot, scrolling aimlessly with no guilt in sight. But then, sometime around noon, your brain whispers: “You’re wasting time.”
I used to live on the other end of that spectrum — all hustle, no pause. My days in the US were a blur of deadlines, meetings, and microwaved meals eaten over Slack notifications. Even weekends came with to-do lists. Rest felt like rebellion. But when I moved back to India after losing my job — the so-called “American dream” crumbling beneath immigration paperwork and HR emails — I found myself with an overabundance of time.
You’d think that would feel freeing. It didn’t.
I remember one particular week after returning — jet-lagged, disoriented, sitting on my childhood bed surrounded by suitcases I didn’t have the will to unpack. I had nowhere to be, no job to rush to, no calls on my calendar. Just me, my thoughts, and a very confused dog named Sauli, who couldn’t understand why her human had stopped moving. Those were lazy days, but not restful ones. They were full of potholes — the kind that didn’t exist on roads but in my own mind.
Then, somewhere between the migraines and the monsoon chai, I started noticing how life was quietly rebuilding itself. Lazy mornings became long walks with Sauli. Cooking — something I once dismissed as a chore — became a small ritual of control and care. I started writing again. Not for performance or productivity, but because the silence demanded a voice.
And of course, there were the chaotic “lazy” days that were anything but peaceful — like my cousin’s wedding, when I was supposed to play the role of the dutiful Karauli while simultaneously chasing monkeys off the buffet table, hunting down the groom’s forgotten outfit, and nursing a migraine that could have powered a small city. There was nothing “productive” about those moments — but they were life in motion, the kind you only notice later, when you’ve stopped rushing through them.
Or the lazy day that turned into an accidental adventure — when a simple breakfast outing with my then-fiancé in New York became an unplanned road trip to nowhere. We kept missing exits until we ended up surrounded by snow, mountains, and silence — but no breakfast in sight. It should’ve been romantic, but it wasn’t. We were starving for different things — and that day, somewhere between the missed exits and the empty stomachs, our relationship started to crumble. Lazy days have a way of revealing what’s already falling apart.
Over time, I realized that rest doesn’t always look like lying still. Sometimes it’s walking through uncertainty, sometimes it’s rebuilding life from scratch, and sometimes it’s letting your dog drag you into the park because she doesn’t care that you’re having an existential crisis — she just wants to chase pigeons.
Lazy days, I’ve learned, are where your internal engine cools enough for the truth to surface.
In About Life Choices and Potholes, that truth shows up in small moments: between fasting rituals and career pivots, visa rejections and homecomings, flings and forgiveness. It’s about realizing that you don’t have to be constantly building something to be becoming someone. That stillness, uncomfortable as it is, can be its own kind of progress.
So yes, lazy days make me feel both rested and unproductive. But maybe that’s the point. Maybe rest isn’t about recovering from work — it’s about remembering who you are when the noise stops.
And sometimes, it takes doing absolutely nothing to finally hear that answer.
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