The art of doing nothing
I’m not the sort of woman who does nothing very well. For instance, one of the reasons I don’t watch football or baseball is because both sports take hours to unfold and I feel guilty sitting in a chair for that long when I could be doing any number of other pressing things-like grocery shopping, checkbook balancing, essay writing, house cleaning, and so on.
Yet, for the past month, I’ve been struggling with this dark, weepy mood that I thought was depression. It was a lot like PMS, except that it lasted an entire month rather than just a few days. There were moments during any given day when I felt like crying for no apparent reason. Life felt overwhelming. The simplest of tasks-such as paying the bills or cooking dinner-seemed overly difficult.
At first, I thought it was seasonable affective disorder (SAD), so I started using the hand-me-down light box I’d inherited from Mom (she’d upgraded). I started taking fish oil again. I asked various friends to periodically tell me that I was wonderful.
All of that sort of helped, and sort of didn’t help, so I eventually learned to become at one with my weepiness.
Happy Again
This past Saturday, however, I woke and, for the first time in a month, I felt happy. I felt normal. I felt me.
“What the heck?” I thought. “What caused this?” I wanted to figure out what I’d finally done right, so that I could do it again and again and continue to feel happy.
Yet, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I’d done nothing-and, by that, I really mean nothing. I’d started going to bed earlier and getting up later. I’d started taking naps.
I’d started slacking off here and there, too. I paid bills late. I lowered my standards for what counted as a square meal for dinner. I allowed clutter to amass in nearly every room of the house. When the various people in my life asked me to jump, I didn’t respond, “How high?” Instead, I said, “I’ll think about that, and maybe I’ll get it eventually-assuming I feel like it.”
You know what? My life didn’t fall apart from all of this nothing doing. Sure, one of my credit cards was frozen for a while because I paid the bill so late, but the problem was easily fixed. I mailed off a check and, sure enough, a couple days later the credit card started working again.
I lost nothing from all of my nothing doing, and I gained a lot-I gained happiness, energy, creativity, and a positive outlook on life. I hadn’t been depressed. I’d been burned out.
And so, this past Saturday, I didn’t just do nothing-I celebrated nothing. I stayed in my jammies all day. So did my daughter. We never left the house. I made grilled cheese for lunch. We watched a lot of TV. I took a nap while she watched even more TV. We listened to music while I read a novel and she played nearby.
She didn’t go blind or get attention deficit disorder from all of the TV viewing. The grilled cheese didn’t make me fat. And, with the exception of two Jehovas, no one came to the door during the late afternoon to witness us still in our jammies and still at one with our bed heads.
It was one of the best Saturdays we’ve ever had.
Popularity: 3% [?]
Related posts:
- I’m good enough, I’m smart enough… I was one of those ballsy kids who spoke her...
- Can a natural complainer learn how to give thanks? Next week, fellow blogger Dina Eisenberg at This Marriage Thing...
- 6 ways to feel happy when life sucks Read a really sad book. This may seem counterintuitive. If...
- I’m thankful for…. Today marks the official end of Dina Lynch Eisenberg's Gratitude...
- 5 ways to forgive I’ve always had problems with forgiveness. I like to hold...
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
Tags: burn out, depression, happiness, self-help, slacking off
