Doing Nothing
I’m doing nothing today.
That’s not true. I’m waiting for someone to deliver a couch. Then, this afternoon, I’ve got to be here so someone can come fix our washing machine.
So basically I’m doing nothing.
And by nothing I mean scrolling through people I used to know on social media and hate staring at Tucker Carlon’s face.
My first emotional response to doing nothing is guilt. I think a side effect of having what I have is thinking that every second of my life should be like the 11 o’clock number from a Broadway Musical. Like if I’m not watching fireworks and orgasming all day, am I even a survivor?
I didn’t do anything last night either.
That’s not true. Jaimie listened to a podcast and I watched the A’s kick the shit out of the Cubs. And I fed her watermelon. That was fun, until some of the juice dripped on her shirt and she freaked out because she hates being sticky.
In reality, it’s probably one of the nights I’ll remember on my death bed a hundred years from now, surrounded by Jaimie and our great-grandkids. “Remember when I fed you watermelon and it was fun until you wanted to kill me because I got your shirt sticky?” And our great-grand kids will be like, “What is watermelon?” And Jaimie will be like, “It’s a fruit we used to have before climate change destroyed it.”
Think about the all the things that had to be going right so we could sit on the couch and do nothing. We had to have a house. And a couch. And a watermelon. She had to have a phone to listen to her podcast. We had to live in a society great enough to invent baseball. We both had to be off work. We had to feel good.
Maybe it’s all too much to be aware of. Maybe we would never get anything done if we realized how breathtaking the bullshit moments of our life actually are.
At least that’s what I’m gonna be telling myself as I clean this dirty casserole dish waiting for these deliver people to arrive.
This isn’t nothing. This is height of existence.