What do you do when there is nothing to do?
What do you do when there is nothing to do?
A lot of us are burnt out. We dream of days off—that aren’t vacation because vacations and travel are just as exhausting. Even if we like them more.
So we dream of the vacation after the vacation. The long weekend. The lazy days.
And then they happen. Like now, the 2025 Shutdown, on day 29 and no end in sight. At first, its wonderful—you organize all your winter gear, clean up your closet, cook some, read a book. Then, hey throw in a historic flood…that will eat up a week.
But now, it’s getting long. You are stressed about re-organizing your calendar and your work to-dos, which you feel are very important, keep getting cancelled. You wonder how to balance getting back to work with the holidays and planned time off. You’re exhausted of this rest, of staying up late watching sports you’ve never cared about and sleeping in. The weather is changing and its beautiful, but limiting. You feel silly for staying in all day, but you can’t go to the two places in town that aren’t your house (PO and grocery store) every day. You tell yourself it’s the darkness, but actually you are tired. But why should you be?
So you open up your website, upload old film photos and write a few stories to try to use your brain. You plan an event. And plan a couple parties. You read another book. You start using the rowing machine.
I don’t know how to analyze what is happening. How to pull it apart and talk about and document what will someday be in the history books. I am usually a documenter. My proudest work that I did for myself was recording amazing people and their experiences with the pandemic. I like to leave artifacts for the historians, give them insights to the moment we know is important as we live it. But this doesn’t feel like a unifying time. It feels different. And I do not know how to record it. I don’t want to interview people—that feels heavy. People waiting for paychecks and food and hoping their jobs are there for them. And do we really need another think piece about this mess anyway?
What I do know is I am eager to keep working on projects I find worthwhile with partners in this region who matter a lot. And I hope I have the opportunity to do so. Soon.
Shutdown furlough is weird. This is absolutely not the rest I dreamed of.
