When You Can, Do Nothing
This morning I woke up in a very anxious mood.
An anxiety dream was going on and it caused me to jolt awake. There was a little bit of light in the sky, so I knew it was at least 4:30am.
Yes, it was.
It was 4:35am.
I immediately didn’t want to get out of bed,
but I also knew I really Did Want to get out of bed.
So I did.
I got a cup of coffee brewing, drank a little water, and as I was doing this stuff, an internal monologue was going on.
“Dude, take the day off.”
“Dude, you’ve already walked more than 30,000 steps per day for the last seven days. Just chill.”
“Dude, finish up that freaky movie you fell asleep to last night (Night Tide, 1964, Dennis Hopper), and then spend the day binge-watching that cool anime series you recently discovered you liked (Naruto).”
“Dude, just relax. You deserve it.”
“Dude, you have all sorts of little things you could get caught up on besides walking 30,000 steps today. Just chill and putz around.”
Etc., etc.
So what did I do?
Nothing.
I surrendered to the insistent voice in my head. I sat and had two coffees, played games on my phone, and tried to find YouTube videos that didn’t make me want to barf.
Then I came across one called Do Nothing and something else. Maybe Do Nothing and Save Your Life?
Yeah, I’m doing nothing, so maybe this will be the justification I’ve been looking for.
Quick summary:
The guy worked from home. He was having a day very similar to how mine had started. A big case of the “I Just want to sit around and do nothing of much importance except distract myself.”
He was scrolling, overeating, watching things he didn’t really want to watch, and generally feeling terrible.
He had overdosed on cheap dopamine.
Then he decided to really do nothing.
Just sit.
A few minutes later, he got up and took care of something he had actually wanted to do but had been resisting.
His theory was that he had started his day on a screen. As a result, He got so high on dopamine that he didn’t want to come down.
So I tried it.
I put down the Phone, took off my headphones, and just sat for a few minutes.
Next thing I knew, I was ready to go for a walk.
Not only that, I started my daily pull-up sets.
Not only that, I did some of my daily tracking.
Not only that, I decided to do one of my long walks in the morning and realized I could do the other in the evening.
Bottom line, it worked.
Shifting gears, this got me thinking about what I had originally planned to write about today.
And That was answering what I meant when I said last week that I would walk 30,000 steps per day this summer “when I can.”
Here’s my first attempt at defining that.
I will walk 30,000 steps per day this summer:
When I am at home and am not traveling somewhere or attending a time-intensive appointment.
By time-intensive, I mean more than two hours.
Yesterday I got my car serviced. That took 3 hours and 45 minutes out of my day. I do this only twice per year. That qualified.
I still tried to force myself to walk a full 30,000 steps.
I got to 27,900.
But for the week? 30,549 per day on average.
Take that, “dude voice.”
I will reduce the number of steps when I travel to play an open mic.
Because I want to establish the habit of attending as many open mics as I reasonably can, I will only require 15,000 steps on those days, even if the round-trip drive is only about an hour.
For every Open Mic outing that requires more than three hours of round-trip travel, I will reduce the requirement by 5,000 steps.
More than four hours round trip: 10,000 steps.
More than five hours round trip: 5,000 steps.
More than seven or eight hours round trip: I’ll still shoot for 5,000, but I’m not going to insist on it.
If I have an emergency day—and I mean a “real” emergency, not what I was trying to talk myself into this morning—then I will get whatever steps I can.
If I am attending a “real” event, the same standards as the open-mic rule will apply.
This coming week I am traveling to Ashland, Oregon, for a week-long conference.
The days start at 7:30am and go until 9pm.
That’s a great example.
On those days, I’ll shoot for 5,000 steps.
It’s a good thing I have been banking steps this past week so that I can sustain my One Hit Wonder goal of averaging 15,000 steps per day from April 29, 2026, through April 28, 2027.
A real project day. Definition TBD.
I have some ideas in mind.
For example, I would love to clear my house of everything I do not love.
Completely Marie Kondo the place.
That Could Easily be a full-day project.
But I don’t want many of those.
Maybe one per month?
TBD.
Well, there you go.
I may modify these a bit as I learn from Implementation. Also, I am consdidering introducing a “song Writing” credit. If I am planning on being at home versus an open mic day, I will earn a reduction of 5,000 steps for the day for each Song I record a scratch demo of that day, max 2 songs. Also, If I get out and do something at night I could earn another 5,000 credit.
We’ll See.
First, Focus on the OPen mics, Dude….(Ah, that Dude Voice can be helpful, too!)
But Overall, I like it.
Doing nothing can really lead to something.