Nothing, nothing, nothing makеs me happy
Nothing brings me nothing but joy
So if you haven’t tried nada
I really think you oughta
— C. Fischoeder, Bob’s Burgers
On minor funks, needing a reset, and indeed doing nothing.
The Reset. Occasionally, the things I do stop doing it for me. Games, shows, books, magazines, etc. I pick them up and realize I’m bored with all of them. I require a break from my breaks.
Oddly enough, taking a vacation or extended weekend with too little purpose or purpose too close to routine seems to generate the same response.
The Reset almost always involves going offline, to some extent. Not like Craig Mod hiking through rural Japan1. It sometimes involves catching up on chores, tidying up the house, or extremely low-key home improvement2.
Related: YouTube could use a function for this. “All my subscriptions & recommendations aren’t doing it, we need to go weirder/normal-er”.
Doing absolutely nothing is an option, but ends up feeling a little more hollow than free-ing.
More often, rebelling against my routines and script-following tendencies works. Binge-watching, grinding a game, ignoring diet, etc. sometimes get me clear.
The trickiest bit is when I’m in An Indefinite Funk. Hobbies seem shallow or meant to impress others or not fulfilling anymore or too much like work or too expensive/intensive to maintain.
So far, I don’t have a great antidote for that. Last time it happened to me, I reverted two decades to making music, decided it still wasn’t for me, and went back to enjoying and sometimes studying/pontificating on music.
Going offline is in some ways a luxurious and nice way to reset. We so rarely allow ourselves a moment or location of offline-ness. If you have to book a flight or outfit your Porsche 911 for camping, so be it. It’s fine to just put your online devices in another room, too.
Recommended: do yourself an Ideal Weekend 3:
- Get coffee
- Go for a walk in a nice park
- Take a nap
- Read a book
- Go for a swim
- Stroll through the vibrant part of your town
Any weekend that includes most of those is likely to give me a reset such that any funk that is imminent or currently occurring goes away.
