Doing nothing

In our busy lives, I’ve often heard myself saying “I’d love a day when I’ve got nothing to do”. And when I was looking forward to retirement, I envisioned myself having plenty of time to pursue old hobbies and new.

However, when the day came when I had nothing to do, it all felt a bit strange. We were moored at Roydon marina, mainly because we needed an engine service and both Steve and I had appointments on an off over a fortnight, and Roydon was a convenient place to stop.

I had hoped to have time to re-paint the red panel  on the sides of the boat and the front door while we were stationary. However, the weather that week was totally unsuitable, with predicted chance of rain from 40-100% each day. Some days were lovely and sunny, but always with a quick squall at some point, so painting was out of the question.

One day in particular was wet, wet wet. So what did we do? Well, after a rather lazy morning we decided to play games. I’d been wanting to play Rummicub with Steve for ages, and we spent a happy morning doing so. After lunch, as it was still raining, we played another game, but by three o’clock we both suffered from cabin fever. We’d had enough of doing nothing, so we donned our waterproofs and went to the post office. That was only a 40-minute walk there and back, but it was too wet to go for a longer walk, so we cocooned ourselves back in the boat. It was cold enough to put the chimney up and make a fire, and it was June!

Both Steve and I are normally very energetic, always on the move or doing something. The day of doing nothing useful got both of us down a bit. It wasn’t at all the restful, restorative day that would allow me to explore the creative side of me that I had envisaged all these years. Instead, it left me feeling restless, bored, without a purpose and dis-satisfied. The solution was to go to bed early and hope for a better day tomorrow.

So what do other people do on days like that? Are you happy to sit in your cabin reading a book or listening to the radio? Do you paint, knit, tick something off your long list of DIY jobs, go outside regardless of the weather, take a train to somewhere and explore? We could have done any one of these, but the doing nothing part of the day totally drained us of energy.

The next day, of course, was a different matter and we set to with determination and vigour. I sanded down the front door, revealing the entire history of the boat, uncovering blue, green and red paint layers. As it was still raining on and off, I resigned myself to leaving the door in its preparatory stage for a while. It didn’t look good, but it was work in progress, which, in some ways, looked better than the peeling paint look we had before.