How the duck and I relax

Two weeks ago, we established how bad I am at meditating. Since that won’t change anytime soon, the duck and I contemplated how else we like to wind down after a busy day of active laziness.

(This picture of a serene duck relaxing alone makes me want to stop writing this. But I’ll be diligent for just a short while longer). Because my love for lists is absolute, I decided to compile the duck and my top-three tranquilizing traditions into a compact list (compact, because laziness is still our ruling relaxation recipe):

Relaxation, relaxation, relaxation

Tea and coffee breaks
Whenever the duck and I aren’t in our usual state of passionate laziness, we like to take little breaks from work to prepare ourselves a delicious cup of tea or coffee. The thought of a cup of fancy homemade oat matcha latte alone is incredibly relaxing. Actually holding, seeing, smelling, and tasting some can take us to our temporary happy place if we try hard enough (but in a relaxing way).

Lovely limitations
One of the most relaxing times for the duck and me is when we travel long distances at a stretch. This doesn’t happen often, but if it does, we take more momentary enjoyment out of it than we probably should. We find it immensely relaxing to have limited options of things to do (we even love airplane food, not for its taste but for what it represents). Most of the time, we listen to a podcast while staring out the window until we inevitably fall asleep. If we’re on a lengthy flight, we catch up on movies (with the added bonus of a second first watch later on, because we didn’t catch half of it on the small screen with the noisy surroundings). Sometimes, all we need is a long walk with a personally pleasant podcast on our ears (is this a sign of digital FOMO?) to feel relaxed.

Our movie routine
Speaking of FOMO, we always feel like we should be reading more books and watching more movies. To make the latter more relaxing (we’ve already written about the former), we have created a cozy evening routine: Whenever we’re not super busy, we like to light a scented candle, gather something to snack on, dim the lights and then sit and watch a movie to wind down before we go to sleep.

There are plenty of other ways the duck and I like to relax, like pretending to do yoga or daydreaming. But as laziness is our predominant provider of peace, and I’ve had far too few lazy hours in the past few weeks, I will save the rest for another post or two.

What are your favorite ways to wind down and relax?