The Bare Minimum, on Days You Don't Want to Do Anything

My eyes were open, but I couldn't get my hand out from under the blanket.

Outside the window it was already bright. A garbage truck rumbled somewhere and faded out. I didn't need to check the clock — the morning had gone on for a while without me. I knew that, and still my body didn't move.

I wasn't sick. I wasn't sad. I just didn't want to do anything.

Days like this arrive without warning. Nothing about the night before was especially hard, and yet you wake up and the line between body and mind has gone slack. You could do it if someone asked. It's only that nothing in you wants to ask.

Usually that's when the negotiating starts. Thirty more minutes. Fine, ten. The ten becomes two hours, and once two hours have passed the negotiation changes shape. The day has already gone on, so let's set it down. We'll begin again tomorrow.

And then you spend the whole day on top of the covers, watching yourself. The watching is the tiring part.

The strange thing is that lying there never feels like rest. The body is clearly doing nothing, and still something keeps running. The list of what was meant to happen scrolls slowly in the background.

Resting, without any rest arriving. That is the most draining part of a day like this.

People follow their condition more than their intentions. Some days there really is less left. It isn't a matter of character, and it isn't a matter of attitude. The way some days come with low water, some days are simply low.

And yet on the low days we keep holding the plan we made for a high one. Because we believe yesterday's self and today's self are the same person. The same person, yes. Not the same condition.

So the plan goes unkept, and an unkept plan drifts around the room for the rest of the day.

But the goal of a day like this isn't to reclaim the day.

It's to pass through it.

Not repairing anything, not making anything good again — just coming out the other side of today without much harm done. A few days a year, that alone is enough.

Thought of that way, the list of what's needed shrinks fast. Not a grand beginning. Just something quiet enough to let the body know that it's morning.

It's easier to start from the body's side. The mind has to be persuaded before it moves, and the body needs no persuading. Often one very small movement comes first, and the mind follows a little later. The other direction rarely works.

And at the end there is the folding up. Deciding for yourself that today ends here. That isn't giving up; it's a decision. Folding the rest of the plan and putting it in a drawer counts, fully, as something done that day.

Fold it, and the evening goes quiet.

A day where nothing happened isn't wasted. You were alive on it, and you carried yourself as far as the next morning.

That's a larger thing than it sounds.

Today probably won't turn into anything lovely. But tomorrow morning, you might open your eyes without holding today against yourself.