The Quest of Doing Not A Single Thing

Oh this isn’t going to be anything that you’re going to want to read, trust me. It’s pretty much going to be an outward journal (that I’m attempting to write to you, like I would talk to someone who I was close to, and with that in mind, I’ll do my best to be clear, specific, and ~interesting~).

~Shimmy shimmy~

“What’re you doing?” Chris asked as I sat at the table at my computer. I was supposed to be on vacation. It was our first day at Lake Tahoe, and I’d taken the day off. Still, my Slack bubble will probably be green, because I’m on my computer, and not outside.

Which won’t be impressive to anyone I work with. Instead, it’ll be concerning. Not only can I not work right, but I can’t vacation right either. Get off your computer. That kind of thing. Internally directed, no one (but me) is saying that.

Anyways.

I was sitting there on my computer, looking at a lake, wondering how the heck Michael Pollan got be Michael Pollan. I mean — that smile though. Did he have a thing, or a time where he was like “Dear God what am I doing with my life and for heaven’s sake, Michael, pull yourself together.”

It’s hard to tell: the Wikipedia pages, the personal websites and bios for these kinds of people typically pick up at the interesting part (~shimmy~). The part when the doing gets good. Or I guess, when the doing… gets done? When things happen! That’s what I mean.

Which is why I’m doing this, I guess. Because it’s a big waste of nothing just consuming bios of people you look up to. And I could (and have) journaled about it, but then that just goes into some bookshelf spot that never goes anywhere.

And didn’t David Sedaris make it someplace by journaling publically? Something like: “Christmas sucks!” Boom did it.

Anyway…

Back to what I was… doing. I guess part of me is hoping that in writing about how I’m doing nothing, I’ll actually be doing something. But that feels a lot like meditating, where you’re “doing” side is trying to do nothing, which, you know, ruins it.

Which brings me to my point. Yes it does, I have a point I promise, and I won’t be cute with it: If I can f*#)? up meditating as much as I do, maybe I can totally f(!)(%* up my doing nothingness, my unproductivity (*shivers* my unpr@!*?#ity) by having my do-nothing side be the driver of my doing something.

F*#!

That wasn’t cute, but at least it was ugly.

Let me try again.

All the time, my doer-brain is, you know, making sure I’m doing alright and surviving and shit. And when I meditate (when I’m trying to meditate, because let’s face it, sitting like I do is not meditating), I’m trying to make myself do nothing. If I’m doing something (even if it’s attempting to do nothing), then I’m not doing nothing. I’m still doing something: I’m trying to not do anything.

So (Jesus help me), if I can ruin meditating by still doing something (even if the “something” is the quest of not doing a single thing), then maybe I can ruin doing nothing (being f*#!ing unpr$*!*tive) by making my nothing side be doing. It’s the other side of doing nothing. It’s when nothing…does something.

Boom. Did it.

Chris looked at me. “What’re you doing?”

Nothing, baby.