--- description: "It's a lovely life, doing nothing," the Prairie Home Companion host wrote title: First Day of Fall: Garrison Keillor Autumn Laziness Essay image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- * [History](/section/history/) ## History Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close # Garrison Keillor's Convincing Argument for Autumnal Laziness  by [Lily Rothman](/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Sep 23, 2014 3:30 PM CUT  by [Lily Rothman](/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Sep 23, 2014 3:30 PM CUT It’s here: autumn. Tuesday is the official first day of the season, which means that summer is officially over, and not just in a [no-wearing-white](http://time.com/3223070/why-its-okay-to-wear-white-after-labor-day/ "undefined") kind of way. But, as Garrison Keillor argued in the pages of TIME back in 2001, that doesn’t mean that a summery lifestyle has to be over too. At the time, the _A Prairie Home Companion_ host and sometime-TIME columnist had recently undergone open-heart surgery and had spent over a month doing, as he put it, nothing. And, he found, nothing was something that was pretty great to do: --- > “” --- Rather, he argued, being lazy helps you get in touch with the real you — and the end of summer shouldn’t mean the end of that. **_You can read the full essay here, free of charge, in TIME’s archives:_** [In Praise of Laziness](http://wp.me/p5HMd-eeSf "undefined") ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3393653/garrison-keillor-autumn/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3393653/garrison-keillor-autumn/"},"headline":"Garrison Keillor's Convincing Argument for Autumnal Laziness","datePublished":"2014-09-23T15:30:59.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-21T10:14:30.263Z","description":"'It's a lovely life, doing nothing,' the Prairie Home Companion host wrote","url":"https://time.com/3393653/garrison-keillor-autumn/","keywords":["Opinion topic","Summer","fall","autumn"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Lily Rothman","jobTitle":"Rothman is managing editor at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/"}],"articleSection":"History","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/history/","name":"History"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3393653/garrison-keillor-autumn/","name":"Garrison Keillor's Convincing Argument for Autumnal Laziness"}}]}] ```