The Appalachian Trail holds great fascination for me. I don’t know why, exactly. The epic 2,185 mile (3,516 km) hike from Maine to Georgia is a 6 month commitment. It passes through my home state, Pennsylvania, but I’ve never hiked a single section of it.
However, I have taken on the concept of “zero days.”
Zero days mean zero miles on the hiking trail. They are a chance to recover, resupply, and enjoy mental and physical self care. Appalachian Trail hikers might start trekking with one zero day a week and then reduce frequency as they become stronger and more feral.
My zero days mean zero done.
They seem to come without warning. I set aside work and chores to focus on whatever dark thing is at hand – either a dark mood I need to get through or a dark room to dull a migraine. Dark chocolate helps, too.
As a person who values herself based on productivity, zero days feel like a fail.
Even when I choose to indulge in a relaxed “pajama day,” rather than having one thrust on me by illness, I struggle through with a nagging feeling that I am going to regret the inactivity. I should be doing something with my time.
I definitely have more zero half-days (half-zero days?) than I used to. Maybe I’m slowing down with age, or have post-Covid effects, or have poisoned my brain with too much screen time, or who knows? Life is passing by and I am not participating in it. There is a lot more unproductive time in my everyday life. Frequent afternoon naps. Watching TV instead of writing or drawing. I feel bad about that but it is hard to stop.
When we lived in Singapore in 1998, I met a fellow expat wife whose entire existence seemed to be watching TV. She didn’t go out to explore the city, or create things, or do anything that I could discern. We had lunch one day and I never saw her again. I worry that I might turn into her with enough zero days.
As it stand now, when Tod comes home in the evening from work, I recount my day to him. While he gets a drink and starts scrolling on his phone to unwind, he has to hear about all the things I did, even when they are mundane tasks like laundry or grocery shopping. I feel like my info dump is more interesting if I have worked on a project or visited someone or done something. So I try to keep doing things worth talking about.
My blog is more interesting too, when I am not navel gazing like this post. But I am struggling now because the end of the year is full of holiday-enforced zero days. I want to record this struggle for myself. If you’ve tuned out by now, that’s fine.
Yesterday was Couch Day, which is a Hill family Christmas tradition. Mom would take a nap on the couch and heat up leftovers for dinner while Jenny and I read the books we got for Christmas. This year, my couch day was watching movies while the cats warmed my legs. Cats are enforcers of zero days.
And the Japanese new year is a whole series of them. We spend a week preparing so that we can do nothing for a couple of days. This is prime preparation season – cleaning, bill paying, and food prep – but I keep avoiding it because I don’t want the zero days that come after.
Philosophically, I accept that my existence is a mere speck. I am one in 8 billion humans on this planet; one of more than ten quintillion living beings on Earth. I am a thread in the tapestry of consciousness, a minuscule manifestation of the All One. Whatever I do or don’t do is meaningless.
Still, I look forward to getting back on the trail and exploring life.
