In-Flight Entertainment: Challenges for Suckers

All these smart people around me on this nine-hour flight have done genius things like download television series (Is series plural for series?) while I'm stuck drafting future tweets (follow me to see the garbage you're missing)?

Although I've laid no claim to the trait of consistency, one thing I can't figure out is the when and how of my self-break-giving-ness vs. my self-torture-slash-suck-it-up-ness.

I mean when it comes to lazy, I am lazy. I am THE lazy. I will guilt-free-ish-ly bail on a baby shower in lieu of a night at home watching four episodes of a hulu-exclusive series I've never heard of—and will tomorrow forget—while having a muffuletta and pint of ice cream delivered to my stoop. I will ponder asking them to bring it to the second floor for me, but I'm pretty sure I've done a pretty great job of convincing Pizza Luce that I have a big fat husband who eats a ton.

But on the other end of the spectrum, I will create completely unnecessarily arduous obstacles for myself. Like that time I only needed one math class in college and, having tested out of college algebra, chose to take pre-calculus, when the correct thing to do was to just take college algebra since I did not have and have never had any intention of going into any scientific or mathematic industry.

Or I'll do something like this: book a flight the morning after my last day of work on the week that I have to pack up and move out of my apartment. Not to mention the spackling and painting of the apartment and the fact that the flight I booked was actually the inaugural flight in the series of a three-month stint living out of a suitcase. Don't even get me started on the suitcase.

So here I am on a jet with a broken in-flight entertainment system...

What is the proper balance, readers? When do you take the easy way and when do you challenge yourself?

P.S. today I split the difference and took the hard way to an easy hotel.

Not a terrible compromise