The impact of nothing days

“Allow for a quiet moment, and remind yourself why it will be alright.”

A good ol’ nothing-burger of a day today. We all come upon them from time-to-time.

Maybe it’s the extra day within a long weekend or a buffer day after a vacation. Maybe it’s a rainy day that commands you to stay in bed. Maybe it’s a day just like any other.

For whatever reason, it turns out to be a day that you’ve decided to say, “Fuck it” to. And behold: The Nothing Day.

There’s no work to be done. There’s no reason to go outside. There’s nothing to look forward to. The world is off until next time.

Diem non captum.

Oh, well. As long as these days aren’t too often, they seem quite fine. Your body will even tell you when you need a nothing day after too many in a row of the opposite variety.

So don’t feel to guilty about it. Hell, enjoy it. It’s a day off from all this, just for you. R&R that ND. Have something fun for dinner too, while you’re at it.

That said, if you are still feeling guilty about it, maybe some loose change is in order. It’s likely you’ve had too many nothing-burgers in a row and you feel like shit for it. Not to worry, we’ve all been there, and there’s a sure path back to enjoying The Nothing Day again. It starts with…

Eh, it can wait until tomorrow.

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Related Poetry

Still Moments

From Fire & Earth: A ThoughPose Poetry Collection | 9/1/2024

Still, they can’t be captured

The moments must remain free

Just retrievable to try and reimagine

For less than what they were at the time

But something more than a mere memory

Still, they will remain dormant until awoken

By a look or a smell or a phrase or a melody

Like an innocent secret between all of those

That might have been right there, right then

Search as they flash in images, like looking

Into an old, damaged View-Master lens,

But not having control over the lever to

Cycle through each still frame in order

So the reel spins chaotically so as to

See them all at once; they tell such

A different story than expected

Still, they’re a nice reminder

Where one comes from,

Who one is made of

What was vs. is

And to take a

Moment now

And again to

Just sit and

Be Still

Bestill

Be

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The Moment or the Memory?

“Odd as it may seem, I am my remembering self, and the experiencing self, who does my living, is like a stranger to me.” ― Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow

What's more significant: the moment itself, or the memory you have of it?

Nobel Prize winner and psychologist, Daniel Kahneman, who has been widely recognized for his work in developing Prospect theory, presents an interesting perspective on the relationship between the experiencing self and the remembering self. As you can probably deduce, the experiencing self describes the version of you who is present during life's moments as they happen, while the remembering self is the version of you who reflects upon these moments, which would then exist as memories.

Consider Daniel Kahneman's example of a one-week vacation vs. a two-week vacation. To the experiencing self, assuming that the second week was just as good as the first, a two-week vacation would seem to be twice as good as a one-week vacation, right?

However, when asking the remembering self to compare these two scenarios and determine which is better, the factor of "time spent" seems to play much less of a role. According to Daniel Kahneman, the factors that are actually in play here, as with any memory, are the changes, the significant events and the ending. These are the elements that make up our memories, and determine how we feel when we reflect upon them. So in this sense, in terms of its contribution to overall happiness, the one-week vacation suddenly seems just as good as the two-week vacation, and perhaps more practical.

"Inspired by true events" is a preface you'll often see at the beginning of a movie or book. But this preface is just as appropriate for each and every memory we've stored. When we recall one of these memories, we are not reliving the experience as it happened, but rather assessing the critical moments within the experience, and building a compelling story around the overall sentiment that these moments produced. The remembering self is the storyteller, while the experiencing self is just one of the characters within the story.

So, what's more significant: the moment itself, or the memory you have of it?