Enjoyable Nothing

Happy New Year!

This is my first written sentence of 2008.

Brilliant! What promise those eight words hold for the rest of these 365 days!

I just backspaced about a page and a half of words. I’m really tired and I don’t know what I’m doing. I spent the night at a friend’s house last night, and on my way home I developed a really brilliant story to write about and I was so determined to publish it here…

Then I got home and started eating and said, “Oh, I’ll write later, I’ll definitely make a point to sit down and write this afternoon. I have an incredible story, bound to warm the hearts of all my readers.”

Instead of writing, I ate cheesecake and laid in bed for god-knows-how-long, reading and thinking, while promising myself that I would write later.

Then, as the sun was setting, I put on my headphones, took my dog for a walk, and we sprinted through cold neighborhood streets.

I got home and made dinner.

After eating at a table surrounded by loud and obnoxious young children, I poured myself a coffee, went downstairs to my room, opened up my laptop, and in a state of total exhaustion, attempted to write. I didn’t really think about anything I was saying— I just typed a bunch of words, looked over them, and thought, What the hell is this.

It wasn’t much. So I backspaced it.

I’m not going to tell you my “heartwarming story” anymore. It was about the value of friendship and how happy it made me.

It was doubtlessly going to be something mind-numbingly tacky. I think you’re much better off not reading it. It was one of those stories that seems really really good only when you’re half-awake.

Here’s the main idea, though:
I spent the night at my friend Beth’s house last night, which, don’t tell my friends, I didn’t really want to do. I’ve really bonded to my own bed over this break, so I wasn’t happy when my parents called me this morning at 3 AM to announce that they wouldn’t pick me up. Reluctantly, I agreed to take part in my friends’ slumber party, but I ended up actually really enjoying myself.

Despite my aching desire not to, I played Cranium until about 4 in the morning with 4 other teenage girls. I had fun playing Cranium’s charades, acting out paparazzi and The Fonz. (I didn’t know who “The Fonz” was at all, besides some old TV character. This made it very difficult for me to act out. I stood at the front of the room laughing and telling my friends that I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, so I was going to try some stand-up comedy instead. They in turn looked at me like I was a moron and inwardly cursed the fact that I was on their team. They never guessed “The Fonz.”)

After hours of playing Cranium and watching When A Stranger Calls, my friends and I finally attempted to go to bed. Iliana and I, however, stayed awake long after everyone else had fallen asleep, giggling nonstop about school and boys. (What more is there to life?)

At 7:30 AM, we finally stopped talking and slept till 11:30. The 5 of us then loitered around Beth’s kitchen for most of the morning (which, incidentally, was the afternoon. But we were eating breakfast until about 2 PM).

It was a simple but wonderful start to 2008. I’ve spent the past a week and half spending virtually no time with any of my friends. I’ve been taking too much advantage of all the nothing I can do, staying in bed reading till one, not answering my phone because I don’t want to interact with humanity, and rarely leaving the house or getting fully dressed—basically being an entirely worthless human being. It’s been enjoyable, but it’s grown old quite quickly.

It was nice to do some nothing with other people for a change.

Even though I get sick of them, my friends make life a lot more worthwhile than laying in bed all day.

Happy 2008 to you all.