Dueling with Depression: Waste More Time

There’s an insightful cartoon by the artist Bill Watterson, creator of Calvin and Hobbes. The comic features a single panel of a lush forest populated with colorful flowers and trees. Calvin is speeding along a trail in a red flyer wagon with Hobbes sitting behind him. Hobbes mentions how quickly the summer has gone by, with Calvin adding, “There’s never enough time to do all the nothing you want.”

I find this statement to be profoundly perceptive, especially as an adult struggling with depression, trying my best to adult my way through this overly demanding, unforgiving world.

Don’t get me wrong: Adulting has its advantages. For example, I can gobble down an entire pint of fudge brownie gelato in the middle of the day after smoking a bowl, and there’s no one to stop me. I can masturbate just about anytime or anywhere in my apartment, and there’s no one to stop me. I can spend an entire day playing video games (naked, of course), and there’s no one to stop me.

But the cruelty of being an adult is that when I’m busy adulting, I usually don’t have the time to do nothing. Even when I do have the time to waste, the world seems to delight in making me feel guilty for not being productive with that time — thanks in part to depression, which never misses an opportunity to make me feel bad.

There’s the pressure of taking on more work or you won’t get that lucrative promotion. If you don’t study every single night in college, someone else will get the job. If you don’t exercise and graze on nothing but lettuce and twigs, you’ll get fat and die alone.

Unfortunately, the freedom that comes with being an adult is fettered with endless responsibilities, irritating obligations, and other atrocious adulting necessities.

And I’m not just talking about work, bills, and anal warts. The devil of adulting is in the details:

Getting up at 6am. Being stuck in traffic. Being stuck in traffic with a pounding hangover. Getting the runs from drinking too much coffee in a failed attempt to stay awake during the work day. Parking tickets. The DMV. Deadlines. Dentist appointments. Spending your one day off mowing the lawn, doing laundry, or fixing a broken water heater. (No wonder I’ve spent mornings standing in the shower with my head down, feeling the cold water hit the back of my skull while wondering what the hell I’m doing with my life.)

It’s that horrible realization that at some point during all this adulting, I lost almost all of the free time I took for granted as a kid. What’s worse is that all those obligations are always waiting in the shadows, eager to devour every last second of my remaining free time. And all this pressure to be productive with every second of every day only exacerbates my depression.

That’s precisely why I passionately guard my days of doing nothing, if only for my mental health. I love spending late afternoons walking through Cheesman Park, staring mindlessly at the passing clouds while listening to old Tangerine Dream albums in a set of comfy headphones.

Take the time to do nothing before winter strips the trees bare of their leaves, covering the trails with a foot of snow. Cultivate more time to do nothing, and discover just how fulfilling doing nothing can be.