note on what to do when feeling listless at home
this is a period piece
go bother your dad. he’s on PTO, so it’s alright. coerce him into a game of ping pong. lull him into a false sense of security before you start putting that wonky sidespin he hates on the serve and you can start gloating. you know how to play him like a violin, like that violin upstairs collecting dust under your bed (you hope the strings are still intact). goad him, play with his emotions. wonder if it’s cruel. decide it’s not; he did the same thing to you for so long. remember you can understand a father without forgiving him.
go to the nytimes website. do the spelling bee. is niblet a word? lede is a word, but they never take it, which is ironic because… it’s the new york times. crossword if it’s monday, tuesday, or wednesday. sudoku if you’re bored. let yourself use the auto-candidates function on the mediums and the hards; if you bothered, you could fill in the candidates anyways. oh look! it’s been two weeks. there’s an acrostic. feel a little bit guilty because this is veronica kim’s account and you’ve been using it for a good year and a half and you’re not quite sure if she knows. oops.
watch some anime. tell yourself you like watching anime not because you’re a huge weeb but because you just like the medium, the artform. examples in your back pocket include rick and morty, dragon prince, archer, teen titans go. don’t watch demon slayer; you’ve watched enough shounen for a lifetime. watch kaguya-sama love is war. laugh to yourself as you think wow you know if they just admitted their feelings they’d actually be so happy. read the manga if your ennui is severe. ignore the hentai ads. remember thuy vi’s brother’s name sounds exactly like ennui (anh-huy) and chortle.
read beautiful things. on earth we’re briefly gorgeous. not necessarily good things. bluets. after all, it’s so hard to do everything right. or anything right for that matter. you’re not looking for salvation; that’s far too ambitious for right now. you need a reason not to watch cnbc, slack jawed, observing the rise and fall of the nasdaq until jack’s mom comes on and you text her live commentary. sour heart will do. sapiens will not.
log onto leetcode. do one interview question. a medium. a hard if dad saw you open the tab. python, obviously. beep boop beep boop. quit your job if you ever have to type a semicolon. note the irony that you love semicolons when you write, but not when you code. you can’t let your brain turn completely to mush before your job starts.
oh god. your job is about to start soon. do you need a haircut beforehand? a little trim wouldn’t hurt. it doesn’t even need to be complete; no one on zoom will see the back of your head.
go upstairs and do some pullups. do at least 8. notice the grooves you’ve made in the doorframe from when the bar presses into the wood. will the house price go down now? you hope not. look at yourself in the mirror. it’s okay to love yourself, according to twitter. check twitter. the feed reports that high school classmate is scheming. your carotid artery leaps through your jaw. should you be scheming? close twitter. twitter always makes the ennui worse. why do you open twitter? maybe you should run. the humidity is shit today. it always is. do an inclined walk on the treadmill while putting some anime on the tv. saiki k. remember to log off your profile when you’re done. mom uses the treadmill too and when you had billy on the street still up, she nearly had a mental breakdown.
make some scrambled eggs. beat the yolks, with chopsticks, not a whisk. do you even have a whisk in the kitchen? a little bit of oil, twenty seconds of high heat. switch to low, pour in the egg, wait a little, add milk, grab the wooden square spoon thing, scrape the sides as they begin to solidify, bring up the heat a little. keep scraping to keep it fluffy and to make the pan easier to clean later, because there is only one pan and it better be clean before mom starts to make dinner. don’t forget to put the milk back in the fridge. plate. add salt and pepper, after it’s on the plate and not during cooking, because you like the way on occasion you’ll bite a fleck of salt that was a bit too large and it’ll crunch between your incisors and you’ll jolt up.
congratulations. yet another day has passed. it’s time for bed. it is 4 in the morning. you know you’re gonna have to change this right? when work starts? it’s alright, you were never good at sleeping anyways.