Do Less
Ina Garten has given the world a fantastic chicken recipe…
[Side note: I’m talking about the first chicken recipe from years ago. The one where you stuff a whole lemon inside. It is everyone’s favourite holiday dish in this house. Except me. Because I’m a vegetarian.]
…and she has high fived everyone who is equally phoning in the morning. Yes.
I started the fall working on a new book. Midway through the fall, I stopped working on the new book and started spending the hour scrolling Goodreads, playing Wordle and Letter Boxed, and not accomplishing anything. I mean, I have a 61 day streak going on Wordle, so it’s not nothing. But it’s… kind of nothing.
I’ve been mostly okay with that. I wasn’t okay the first few weeks when I felt like I should be doing something more with my time before I started work. But this is what I can do at this point in the pandemic. I can play word games and read books and watch television and talk to friends via Zoom. Go to work, cook dinner, clean the house. And not much else.
11 comments
Bare minimum seems reasonable at this point. I don’t even want to cook any more, though…
Right there with you. Wordle, reading, mindless scrolling.
If it feels perfect, it IS perfect.
A 61-day streak on Wordle? You must have been one of the earliest adopters :)!
“This is what I can do at this point in the pandemic.” Exactly!! I was talking to my mom on the phone yesterday and she was asking me a million questions about what all I’ve done. I actually had a pretty productive week, but who cares! It’s a pandemic!! I was annoyed because I felt like she was judging me.
“Do less” is very loving, healthy advice! <3
I’m living the “do less” philosophy. Because doing more will break me. Besides, just as you pointed out, there’s beautiful in the minimum.
I think a nearly two year streak of surviving the pandemic with your sanity mostly intact is a pretty major accomplishment. I don’t think that counts as phoning it in. 💜
I don’t know if you’ve seen Encanto but the line from Surface Pressure about Hercules not wanting to fight Cerberus is how I feel (where Cerberus is *waves hands at everything*).
It takes all of my available brain room to function as an adult right now. And anything above what absolutely has to be done to keep work/house/kids functioning is too much.
Your escapes sound better than my doom scrolling on Twitter.
Also I am super proud of my streak on Wordle so I think you should claim yours as something!
Yes to wordle and mindless streaming. I have read almost exclusively murder mysteries because anything else is too much. I was feeling like I should be reading something different but who cares? This is how I’m making it through every day.
I feel you. It seems like everything is a struggle now. I hopped in the Wordle train finally, after playing Guess My Word since you introduced it to me. I fell like I watch more mindless tv than I used to and veg out a lot more. Do less is kind of survival mode, I think. This is just going on forever…
If I can get up, shower and make the bed these days (winter, covid, etc.), I consider the day a success. Everything else is gravy. Hang in there!
Oooh, I LOVE her four tips. I tend to follow those now, and the pandemic has hardly reached our shores. Oh dear.