Tonight my friend Allie sent me an essay about doing nothing. Not sitting on your phone and doing nothing— actively, intentionally doing nothing. Like Meditation? No. Meditation is very much something, and it’s something I’m not good at. I understand that meditation is a practice but I never liked practicing my cello either, because I don’t like to practice things I’m not good at. So I decided to try this whole doing nothing thing. I went into the den and laid down under the big window. I live alongside a hill and if you lay down on the floor you see the tops of the trees. Only the trees, nothing manufactured or altered by humans. Plus, the trees sit atop that hill I just mentioned so the Spruce and Birch seem exceptionally tall. I set my timer for 20 minutes, draped myself in a weighted blanket, and stared at the tops of the trees as the sun was setting. and instead of judging my self for thinking too much I opened the gates. Like a sheep herder who opens the gate for hungry sheep to graze a new field, the thoughts flooded in. But after a bit, they settled, and my cat Olive came up to me and sniffed my ear. in in out in in out. (please make that sound yourself, but imagine it’s coming from a little nose). This tiny investigation was enough in itself to let me know that i need to be doing a hell of a lot less more often. I thought about Kailyn, who was coming over in a short time. I thought where I was, exactly 8 years ago to the day, when I got the call that my mom had ended her life. I thought about the unknown trajectory that I was sent on, leading me here. I thought about the Mushroom Swiss burger I had today, that was really quite bad for a restaurant that has “burger” in their name. I watched a cloud, so faint, slide behind the wall of trees. It was moving so slowly that if I had been moving at all myself, I wouldn’t have noticed its path. I thought about my thoughts. and this journal entry. would I remember everything I through of? who cares, I thought, just let it go. I checked my timer, 7 minutes left. I felt bored and aimless, two things that I generally treat with distraction (TV, phone) or engagement (Art, reading). But this was something else. this was neither of those two, it was simply nothing, and I felt okay.