Apparently, I Have Nothing To Say

I sat down to write today’s blog and discovered I had absolutely nothing to say.

This is unusual for me. I normally have opinions about everything. Politics, television, social media, ageing, potholes, weak coffee, sharks, household appliances that require an engineering degree and products advertised on Facebook that claim to reverse thirty years of physical decline using rosemary and positive thinking.

Today? Nothing.

I stared at the screen, waiting for inspiration. The screen stared back. Eventually, we both accepted that neither of us was bringing much to the relationship.

Of course, the internet doesn’t allow you to have nothing to say anymore. You must constantly produce content. You need thoughts, reactions, hot takes and preferably a strong emotional response to something that happened twelve minutes ago. If you aren’t posting, commenting, sharing or becoming temporarily furious, people may assume you have died.

Once, you could simply have a quiet day. Nobody demanded an update. You could sit in your house, drink coffee and achieve nothing without turning it into a lifestyle philosophy.

Now, even doing nothing has to become content.

“Today I am embracing stillness.”

No, you’re lying on the couch watching television. And that’s perfectly fine.

Perhaps having nothing to say is actually a sign of mental health. Maybe my brain has finally decided it doesn’t need to investigate every idiotic advertisement, political statement or celebrity confession placed in front of it.

Perhaps it has taken the day off.

It has been working fairly hard lately. There is a lot of nonsense to process. Every time it thinks it has caught up, someone launches an AI-powered toothbrush, a billionaire starts another argument, or a woman on Facebook explains that doctors don’t want us to know about the healing properties of ordinary kitchen salt.

My brain deserves annual leave.

So; today’s blog is about nothing. No profound conclusion. No outrage. No carefully constructed observation about the collapse of civilisation.

Just me, sitting here, drinking coffee and admitting that for once, I don’t have an opinion worth sharing.

I’m sure it won’t last.