Why Is It So Exhausting to Sit on My Butt and Do Nothing?

I should be more productive than this.  Really. What else do I have to do?

When the quarantine first started, I had such big dreams for how much I would get done. 

Do 100 push-ups a day.
Finish my book.
Find an empty hoop and get my basketball game back in gear.
Read all those books on my reading list that have piled up.
Refresh my Spanish.

They all sounded nice.  And what else did I have to do?

Not much, it seems.  But that hasn't really mattered.

My plans to get stuff done haven't quite worked out just yet. (And tomorrow isn't looking great either.)  I haven't developed a new, productive routine, unless you count my daily binging on my favorite sitcoms. 

It turns out doing nothing is more exhausting than I had imagined.

Life isn't a total waste, but it isn't the panacea of productivity I had hoped for. 

I've read a couple of books in the last month, and I get some exercise every now and then.  But if the quarantine ended tomorrow, I wouldn't leave the experience feeling like I in any way made myself better through the experience. 

I haven't used this time to think of any major life insights, and I'm no closer to crossing off any particular goal.  Instead, my biggest life accomplishment is something more like signing up for Nexflix and discovering the brilliance of Schitt's Creek.

Part of me wants to be annoyed at myself about this, but I also don't have the energy for that.  Besides,  I mostly sit at home and type on my computer during business hours.  The last thing I should want to do at night is to sit at home and type on my computer. 

Maybe you can relate?

When all sports, concerts, and theaters are closed for the indefinite future, there are no trips to plan, and no dinners out, why wouldn't we be unduly excited about the next episode of some new show?  What else am we supposed to look forward to?  The Rapture? 

It's just hard to be productive, beyond life's mere essentials, when most everything already feels like a chore. 

I'm an introvert, so I rarely get bored in my own company.  But even so, when the social aspect of life falls out of balance, I never want to make up for that lack of fun by doing stuff that's more productive.

I keep seeing Facebook memes on my friend's pages pushing back against others who were judging them for learning new skills during the quarantine.  I had always wondered what kind of jerky friends these people knew who would ever think of doing that.

Then I realized I had been doing that to myself. 

Maybe none of us should.

And bravo to those who have entertained and educated children during this.  You've possibly accomplished something harder than I have during this time, although I'd argue that making it through all nine seasons of The Office in two weeks counts for something.

But I will concede that accomplishment has marginally less value than raising other life forms to be productive citizens.  So, if you've managed to keep your kids afloat while keeping it all together, be proud of yourself for that.  And if don't have kids, you can still be proud of yourself for keeping it all together.  And if you haven't kept it all together, be proud of yourself for reading this blog. 

It's probably more than I would have accomplished.