I Want To Do Nothing

Ten years ago I didn’t think twice about spending all day stoned on the living room floor of my apartment while whatever movie marathon on the Syfy channel played. Today, if I decide to cruise the streets of San Andreas for a couple of hours on a Saturday I can feel the Grim Reaper hanging over my shoulder. When I turn to plot my escape I see his hollow eyes filled like double barreled shotguns that shoot semi-automatic machine guns with bullets made of flamethrowers. With an arsenal like that there’s no way that I’ll achieve my dream of doing nothing. I’ll be riddled with bullets before I can put on my sweatpants.

Where I once found a nobility in my procrastination I now see wasted time. I could have been learning to swim or speak German or getting more therapy. Instead, I’ve seen every version of Scooby Doo that’s ever been produced. I’m an accidental completist. Procrastinating in your 30s just doesn’t hit as hard as it does in your 20s. You (by “You” I mean “I” as in me) find yourself looking for ways to stay busy, you create an imitation of life.

What I really want is to do nothing. Not nothing, but a personal version of relaxation that looks like nothing from the outside. I’m reading comics, I’m lying in the park, I’m day drinking and eavesdropping on a first date, that’s how I see myself when I’m doing nothing in my dreams. 

To accomplish my dream of doing nothing I have no other choice but to fake my death. The drive to do nothing is so strong that I’d rather just hide out in a cabin or a garage apartment in a college town, grow a beard and then shave it and grow it again while the world mourns “Jacob Shelton.” Whoever that is, I’ve never heard of him.. I haven’t chosen a new identity or even a place where I can vanish to, but I’ve always wanted to see Austria or Norway. They speak English there don’t they? Are they welcoming to strangers running away from a past filled with a screaming Google calendar? Do they even have Google in Norway? It’s for the best if they don’t.

Maybe I’ll stick around the lower 48. I’m an American at heart. I feel at home on back roads. I love a pair of Levi’s. I like to see a Taco Bell in a sandstone strip mall on the outer edges of the big city. A place like that doesn’t feel like home but I recognize it. I know the way it operates and there’s a comfort in that. Once I disappear from regular life, after I burn my social security card and birth certificate I’ll have a brief flirtation with managing one of those nondescript Taco Bells but I’ll shy away from the corporate life, from the purple polo and hair net. Instead I’ll choose to tend bar at an out of the way dive, always on the verge of closing but kept alive by the barflies and twenty-somethings slumming when they should be writing essays.

Don’t come looking for me, please, I’m begging you. But if you do see me refilling someone’s glass of Coors Lite or over serving a regular just leave me a fiver on the bar. Don’t say hi, don’t ask me what I’ve been up to. If you’re really wondering what my answer would be it’s this: nothing.

You can follow Jacob Shelton on Twitter and Instagram or read more of his work in Mindfuck or in like every issue of Kill Pretty.