It’s so hard to do anything when you have nothing to do. I always put my tasks away for later when they don’t have a specified deadline. I promise myself that when another wave of downtime rolls in at work, I’ll be productive. Catch up on the news, complete some online tutorial, get into self-learning, write a book, learn how to play chess, SOMETHING. But instead, I just sink deeper into sloth. Sit around watching YouTube videos of cats or scroll Zillow pretending like I’m buying a house, increasing my budget with every minute, eventually browsing penthouses on Central Park South. I get wrapped up to the point that when someone asks me to do anything at all I feel bothered, infringed upon, get grouchy and offended. That’s exactly how the week I realized Mrs. Meyer's Liquid Laundry Detergent doesn’t quite cut the ice was. Pure, unadulterated sloth. The truth is that I did have a project to work on, but it was open ended. “Get it done in the next month or two,” they told me, which meant it wasn’t getting started on until I felt the pressure of time running out. Where the hell would the world be without deadlines? Anyways, I decided to take a nap. We have a quiet room at my job. Not to feel any lazier than I already did, I framed the nap as working on the optimization of my internal rest levels, which in turn would increase my overall work performance. It actually made me feel productive for the few seconds that I believed it. I stretched out on the huge recliner and dreamt about my cat. I sat up and looked at my phone. Thirty-seven minutes passed. Good deal, good nap. I went to get up and noticed that something stinks like an old dish rag. I started sniffing around – was it the recliner? Did someone spill something in here? Was it… It was me. I sniffed my t-shirt. It was me! I was appalled. I felt violated. How could this be? I mean, I JUST did the laundry. This t-shirt is fresh out of the closet. “Maybe you took it out of the laundry bin,” I heard a voice saying in my head. Nothing made sense. I started getting dizzy. I saw no other choice. I had to get home and change. The last thing I need was my coworkers getting offended by my smell. Normally this wouldn’t take longer than 30 minutes but I was attacked by homeless people on the subway on my way home so that added an extra 15minutes on top to fight them off. But anyways, after that I stunk ten times as bad. I ran into my apartment and started falling all over the place because I was rushing, trying to change my clothes. My cat got all nervous and started hissing at me, clawed at my leg a couple times then ran off somewhere. Things just don’t work when you try to rush. After I got back to work I realized that the clothes I changed into were washed with the same detergent and also stink. I guess it could have been worse though. Long story short, Mrs. Meyer's isn’t bad if you’ve got a brand-new state-ot-the-art washing machine with a million gallon drum and five-hour-long cycles and you don’t mix your gym clothes with your regular clothes, none of which is the case for me. So if you're just trying make it through life one day at a time without any extra hassles like I am, go on and get yourself some OxiClean and take smelly clothes off the list of things to worry about.
