On Wednesday afternoon, Eric left for Switzerland. (A business trip. He swears it.) The film crew, which was supposed to finish up with me Wednesday evening, got called off by an explosion at Yale. (Stupid explosion. Stupid Yale.) So as I was leaving work, shopping list in hand, I decided, all of a sudden, to spend the evening doing Nothing.
Nothing. The golden prize that had been glowing at the back of mind like a treasure in a cave, every morning that I got up when Eric was still in bed, wrote, fed the cats, rode the subway, did my job, shopped, cooked, cleaned the house, went back to sleep exhausted, day after endless day. Nothing. What a seductive whisper of a word it is.
I did not go to the grocery. I rode the subway directly home. I walked in the door, put on a skillet to heat up a veal chop, opened a bottle of wine.
This is what you may do when doing Nothing:
- Eat leftovers. You must do nothing fancy with the leftovers. You should only dirty one pan, and then you should not wash it. It is not necessary to eat more than one variety of food – no vegetables with your veal chop, no salad with your spaghetti. Microwaving is ideal for doing Nothing, but if you do not have one, make do as best you can.
- Drink wine – more than half a bottle, but less than an entire one. Drink an entire bottle of wine and you risk Going On a Bender, which is Doing Something.
- Play Civ III. Don’t let yourself get too involved, though – that, too, would be Going On A Bender. Limit yourself to an hour, two at the most.
- Read a book – only a novel, though, and not serious a one.
- Watch television. This much is obvious. You could also, in theory, watch a silly movie, but Eric had rearranged the cables while trying unsuccessfully to tape Buffy, so I couldn’t get the DVD going. Which was probably for the best, since the next movie I have is Mostly Martha. Watching a German movie with subtitles is definitely doing Something. Subtitles on Bollywood movies are okay, though.
- Smoke cigarettes, one or two only. (See “Bender” above.)
- Doze on couch. Remember, though, that the ultimate goal of Doing Nothing is rejuvenation. No dice if you wake up at 4:30 in the morning curled up on the sofa without a blanket, with a monster crick in your neck and the deafening rumble of freight trucks about six inches from your ear.
- Go to sleep early. Before 10 if you can. You may think you’ll have trouble getting to sleep, but if you’ve Done Nothing properly all evening, you should have successfully shut off the synapses snapping in your higher brain levels. You should drop right off. Anyway, I leave you to your own devices once you’re in bed – everyone knows how to help themselves off to sleep.
I won’t promise that it’ll be easy. I kept trying to start Doing Things. Wash dishes, straighten the apartment, watch a German movie. I even thought of starting up the marinade for the beef for Braised Beef in Aspic, but I stopped myself just in time. Doing Nothing is hard. It’s good for you, now and again. I’ll tell you what, though – it’s not nearly a fun as I’d thought it would be.
7:48:54 AM 
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