What do you think about things that seem to embody opposite qualities?

An animal that is so unique to almost be considered ugly but in that uniqueness it’s totally adorable?

A food that is both sweet and spicy?

A work of art so incredibly genius yet hard to look at, read or experience because it contains so much that is awful?

I love a good contradiction: to me, contradictions add depth where there really ought not to be. And the one I’ve been thinking about lately is thus:

Hard working lazy people.

How do I define these people?

Well, I will use my poor husband as the example. He will decide to mop the floor. First he will get the mop out and ask me to assemble it properly…because…you know…my degree in engineering and all…(not). Then he will proceed to do about half the area that he should mop. Then he will leave the mop and the cleaning solution out somewhere in the house. Like, the solution will be on the floor next to a chair, and the mop will be against the wall in the bedroom.

Hard working enough to decide without nagging that the floor needs to be mopped. Lazy enough to not do the job thoroughly and put the utensils away.

I, on the other hand, am an energetic slacker. When I decide to do something I do it 100%. I have the right tools, I set up a workstation, I have a lot energy when I get involved in a project. However, I really really really need to be motivated to tackle something. I will not normally wake up and say- “Gee- I need to mop.”

I wonder if this has to do with the planner/no planner mentality. I use a planner. I detail everything I need to do. I keep lists. My husband is the opposite- though he keeps a date book he rarely checks it. Maybe he makes one list a year…

We are both self motivated- yet our paths of motivation are different. I need to think about it and know that I can do the whole job in a certain way. My Husband is more impulsive- he gets the idea and just does it.

Neither of us are right or wrong: it’s just how we handle things. Luckily our shared traits have produced our daughter: energetic and hard working. But never fear: she has her own particular brand of oxymoron’s.

What are your personal oxymoron’s? What qualities do you have that seem to be opposite in one way or another?

Do you have a favorite contradiction? A combo that is a little bit (or a lot) odd that really makes you feel something. I know the chocolate covered bacon fad is something I can’t really fathom but there are people who LOVE it…

Think- reflect-

Discuss…

51 thoughts on “I Love a Good Oxymoron”

  2. I’m an energetic slacker, too. WHEN I decide to do something I do it to the best of my ability, but it’s the deciding to do something that trips me up. Would rather not, you know?

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  4. Micromanaging delegator. Took me a bit to find the words here but I believe I referenced this control issue I seem to have in a post not long ago. I really want to turn over tasks to others, really I do, but it’s just so difficult when those others don’t do things my way…

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    2. I’m with you there! Everyone else in the house can tell I’m itching to criticize, even when I try so hard not to. I find it especially hard when the in laws are over, they’re so helpful and don’t want me to be doing the cooking etc alone. So kind of them but also so difficult!

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  6. I’m also an energetic slacker for the most part but sometimes I am like your husband if I try to do too much at once. The last task is not done at 100%. I know some people who are dumb smart people. They are vey intelligent but sometimes do dense it boggles my mind.

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  7. I’m all about the organized chaos. That really kind of exemplifies me on a lot of different levels. Things may look or seem really chaotic, but buried under that chaos is a plan or a system that I work with that makes it not chaotic. If you could see my kitchen during any of my baking marathons, you’d get a perfect example of what I’m talking about.

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  13. That’s so fun, LA. Hmmm, let’s see. How about a higher educated, clean-cut, running a business unit at the local community college, self-admitted and labeled geeky guy with over 34 tattoos? Hahahaha. I love that one. That is true. Anyway, I think we all have those things that are contradictory or apparent paradoxes about ourselves. Here is another one. Planner, check; strategic thinker, check; visionary, check; organized, check; office appearance? A complete mess. Papers everywhere, 20 post-its with things I need to do… You get the idea. The thing I enjoy most about this conversation is that these apparent paradoxes are not really paradoxes at all. We are all quite complex. Well, that was fun.

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  14. I’m an efficiently lazy person: I will write a list of chores, work my way through most of them, then suddenly need to have nap/check my phone/read blogs, and oops 2 hours goes by and I’ve done nothing! 🙂

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    2. I keep all the chores in my head. Very seldom have a list. Many facets of my character, including many of those in the comments, have been mine to indulge or ignore but I have not operated from “both sides of the coin” at the same time. I’ve evolved on a sliding scale. I used to be organized and neat with schedules and lists. Now I hardly ever do any of that. I call it laziness but at my age I feel like I’ve earned it.

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  16. I think I’m an uninspired creative person. I wake up with great ideas and energy to take on my creative project. Then I surf through pages on the internet and lose my inspiration. My son is the dumb smart type. He was valedictorian, had almost perfect SATs. Then I get a call from him his first week of college asking me how he could get home from COSTCO on his bike with the tons of stuff he bought.

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  20. My job is in tech and automation but I love writing notes on paper, and recently board a whiteboard for my to do list! Analogue techie?

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