German Expressions: How to Say, “I Really Don’t Feel Like Working Today.”

Working sucks. Nobody likes it. Oh sure, a famous musician who gets to spend all day in the studio being creative might claim to love working, but that’s not what I mean: I’m talking about the part where money is involved. Business. That moment which reminds us all we actually do want that paycheck. Most of us need it, in fact. And when you’re doing something for money, you cannot, by definition, love it as much as something you do only for yourself. Without money involved, it becomes a hobby, and a hobby is a passionate endeavor in which the reward comes simply through the act of doing it. Hell, I genuinely enjoy being an illustrator and graphic designer for a living, but I don’t love it anywhere near as much as I do reading fantasy novels on the couch and farting under the blanket. That shit is all mine.

Anyway, as I’ve mentioned countless times before, my wife is a high school teacher here in Hannover, Germany — and a damn good one at that. She spends almost every evening preparing lessons for the next day, and her weekends are a healthy mixture of work and relaxation. (Mostly work, while I lounge around the house stuffing my face with blueberries and playing Clash of Clans on my iPhone.)

So after a particularly long day at work — which began with her alarm clock going off at 5:00am — my German wife came home in the late evening and dropped her book bag in the hallway. Faced with another 2 hours of lesson planning and grading test in our home office before she could even begin to relax, she looked at me with sad, weary eyes and said:

“I don’t think I can get very old at my desk today.”*

*In German, this would be — “Heute werde ich nicht alt an meinem Schreibtisch.” — though the expression is not limited to this particular activity; you could switch “at my desk” with virtually anything else, like “doing the laundry,” “sitting in traffic,” or “doing my taxes…at all… ever.” Really, it just means you would rather spend what precious hours remain of your mortal life doing something other than completing the immediate task at hand. (You lazy fuck.)