An Unexceptional Blog

This last week I experienced my first migraine. It was a 6 day long affair in my case, and I give it a solid 3 out of 10. “Why not zero?” I hear you ask? I give it a non-zero score only for what it has taught me. This migraine opened my eyes to the art of doing nothing. It is an art at which I am famously terrible, dear reader, but I now have renewed interest in it. 

A few days into this migraine, I realized I couldn’t — simply could not — do anything. Looking at any screen made me feel like my head and my body were in different dimensions. Trying to get any housework done was, as my mom would say it, “peine perdue” (a lost cause), as I had to stop every few steps I took to steady myself from the assaults of continuous dizzy spells which would send me this way and that as though I was on a ship in high seas during a storm. I couldn’t even read my books; focusing on anything for more than a few moments made my brain feel like it was coming out of my stomach. 

So, I did nothing. 

There I was, in bed, eyes closed, completely immobile, and entirely lost in the unfathomable nothingness that had been forced on me. It was definitely a challenge.

Doing nothing, to me, has always felt like such a waste of time. It’s almost impossible for me to stop myself from creating to-do lists, complete each item, and, creating more checkboxes when I run out of things to do. Doing nothing feels shameful. If my husband comes home from work early and finds me sitting on the couch, I am so embarrassed that I can’t even stop myself before blurting “I swear I just sat down! It’s only been a moment, I did [insert any task] just before you got here,” completely red in the face. “Just relax, will you! You don’t need to give me excuses for resting!” and he too, gets red in the face, though it is exasperation, not shame, that brings on this colour.

I’ll have you know, dear reader, that I have “nothing” scheduled every Saturday and Sunday morning. If you were to look in my schedule book (I’ll tell you more about the Almighty Schedule Book in a future post), you will see that on Saturday and Sunday mornings, it is written “Nothing before 8:30 am.” I am aware that scheduling nothingness this way might defeat the purpose, but this is the closest I’ve come to it before the experience of this highly educational migraine.  

On a day my husband was done his school-work and his work-work early, I suggested: “Let’s do nothing tonight! Let’s do nothing with all our hearts. Let’s fully and mindfully do nothing. Let’s be the best at nothinging! I’m going to nothing as hard as I can!” You can guess, dear reader, at the effectiveness of this strategy.  

This migraine gave me a very justifiable and veritable excuse for doing nothing, for the first time. The type of person that I am needed such an excuse to be able to indulge, guilt-free. Though I was forced into this predicament by the migraine, the fact that I was admittedly incapable of doing anything meant that I didn’t have to feel bad about doing nothing. And so I was permitted to actually experience nothingness. I’ve had a taste, dear reader, and it was good. 

So here is what my migraine taught me about doing nothing: I need to be able to do this — this being nothing — and, to do it without an excuse. From time to time, I’m going to try to indulge in nothingness, really revel in it. Now that I know what it can feel like when it’s not inundated with shame, I want to try, when I can, to do nothing only and purely “because I want to.”