the day we did nothing
by Mitchell Miller
We’re not sure whose idea it was. Or how they convinced everyone else to do it. But we’d all been ground to stubs so we said, heck, let’s go for it. So we switched off our alarms and slept in. We dreamed of flying/our childhood bedroom/really good sex. There were other dreams we can’t remember at all, ones that only left us with a feeling of assurance that important memories were properly filed away.
We wake up in a pool of warm sunlight. At first we feel guilty for sleeping so late, but then we remember that this is no ordinary day. It’s the day we do nothing. We consider getting up, but instead we spoon our lover/dog/pillow. When it’s almost time for work, we call in sick but nobody’s there to pick up the phone. It’s actually happening, we realize. Everyone’s in. Everyone’s had it.
Eventually we get up and put on something comfortable. There’s no one to impress today. We switch off our phone/watch/computer and try one of those one-hour rawdogs. No screens, no music, no talking, just unoxidized thoughts that have been shipwrecked for decades. Fights/failures/embarrassments rise to the surface, but also jokes/wins/romances. We ponder the multitude of timelines that branched out from the moment we made our first conscious decision. We wonder if the real world is going on inside our heads and the things outside are imagined. We remember how—
A bugle blasts/firecracker explodes/tires squeal. We open the window and yell down to the street, you shouldn’t be playing the trumpet/setting off fireworks/drag racing! Today’s the do-nothing day! They shrug and say we can’t just sit inside and do nothing. We’re not rocks! We’re sentient beings! They toot their horn/twirl a sparkler/do a donut.
Fine. We’ll go outside. That’s passive enough. So we squint into the sun and step out. Our neighbor is also standing out front, looking dazed. We wave to each other. They beckon us over and invite us in for tea/pancakes/a smoke. We’ve never been inside their home before but it’s pretty much how we imagined. We sip our tea/eat our stacks/hit the bong and laugh about how we always see each other taking out the trash/walking the dog/raking leaves and consider striking up a conversation but assume the other is too busy. We offer to help clean up but they refuse. That’s tomorrow’s project. For today, we do nothing.
We’re feeling ambitious now, so we go for a walk. On familiar streets, we notice unfamiliar things. A child’s handprint in the concrete/action figure in the hollow of a tree/dragonfly’s stained-glass wings. Things we hurried past hundreds of time, horse-blindered by our phone/iced coffee/existential dread. We pass the park. Nobody seems to be abiding by the do-nothing orders, but at least nobody’s working. We all look content, or at least relieved. The creases between our eyebrows have smoothed. Doing nothing was a good idea.
The sky bleeds out and we decide to go home. We try turning on the TV, but it fizzles with static. So we let the silence engulf us. Is this how a rock feels? Maybe this is what it’s like after we die. Nobody to remember us. Nothing we do really matters. But what we don’t do doesn’t matter either. So why not do something? We’re bored of this do-nothing day. Screw it. Let’s do everything.
We jog around the block/eat a batch of brownies warm straight out of the pan/unearth our saxophone from high school and make up some tunes and upload a song to Soundcloud and it goes viral on TikTok and our inbox is flooded with offers from record labels so we collaborate on the next Pixar film soundtrack and take morning interviews and play for late night shows and sue no fewer than twenty people for copyright infringement and we go on a North American tour with added dates in New York and Mexico City and buy property in La Jolla and a boat in Sarasota and we pen a best-selling memoir and receive an honorary PhD from the University of Nevada, Reno and ride the first-ever passenger ship to the moon and we look back at the blue marble, at everything we gained, at everything we lost.
We cry.
Whatever we do, we always end up crying:
Tomorrow, we will really do nothing.
Photo of Mitchell Miller
BIO: Mitchell Miller was raised in Credit River, MN and now resides in Los Angeles. His work has been published in The Coil. He can be found on Instagram @mitchellmiller684.