There’s never enough time to do all the nothing you want.
– Calvin, to Hobbes.

Somewhere I Have Never Travelled
– e.e. cummings

somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond

any experience, your eyes have their silence:

in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,

or which I cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me

though I have closed myself as fingers,

you open petal by petal myself as Spring opens

(touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, I and

my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,

as when the heart of this flower imagines

the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals

the power of your intense fragility: whose texture

compels me with the color of it

“People who are engaged in challenging activities with clear goals tend to be happier than those who lead relaxing, pleasurable lives. The less one works just for oneself, the larger the scope of one’s relationships and commitments, the happier a person is likely to be.”

– Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, “The Future of Happiness”

“How do you do Nothing?” asked Pooh, after he had wondered for a long time.

“Well, it’s when people call out at you just as you’re going off to do it:

‘What are you going to do, Christopher Robin’, and you say, ‘Oh, nothing’, and then you go and do it”.

“Oh, I see,” said Pooh.

“This is a nothing sort of thing that we’re doing now”.

“Oh, I see,” said Pooh again.

“It means just going along, listening to all the things you can’t hear, and not bothering.”

-A.A. Milne

The House at Pooh Corner

“If you think you have things under control, you

For the benefit of my mother, and anyone else concerned about the frequency of liquor mentions on this site:

There are more old drunkards than old doctors.
— Benjamin Franklin

An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with fools.
— Ernest Hemmingway

Always remember that I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.

–Winston Churchill

“Extensive interviews show that not one alcoholic has ever actually seen a pink elephant.”
–Yale University, Center of Alcoholic Studies