I didn't do the work

I didn’t do the work. I meant to, but I didn’t. I did, however, read an entire Wikipedia page about the history of citrus fruits and then fell into a two-hour rabbit hole about 19th-century British naval scurvy prevention strategies, which I think we can all agree is kind of productive, if not for my career, then at least for my ongoing personal enrichment, which in turn will probably enrich my work, when I get around to doing it. But I didn’t do the work.

I didn’t do the work, but I did open the document where the work lives. I even changed the file name, which is a crucial part of the process. If a file is not named properly, it simply cannot be taken seriously. I renamed it to something sleek and professional—with a date!—before staring at it for 15 minutes, feeling the weight of its expectations. It is not my fault that the document held a passive-aggressive silence, refusing to collaborate with me. I started. But I didn’t do the work.

I didn’t do the work, but I did spend a significant amount of time philosophizing about whether the work even needed to be done. Is this work important, in a grand sense? Will it change lives? Will it make the internet—or the world—a better place? Or am I just filling another tiny, blinking box in a spreadsheet of meaningless toil, contributing to the great, churning sea of content no one will ever read, the information equivalent of throwing another plastic fork into the ocean? If so, wouldn’t not doing the work be a quiet act of rebellion? A strike against the noise? A stand for quality over quantity? But also: I need to pay rent. So, existential crisis aside, I still didn’t do the work.

I didn’t do the work, but I did think about it so much that I’m exhausted, which is basically the same as working. I carried the weight of the work, the guilt of the work, in my heart and soul and lower back, which I think means I already experienced the work, just without producing anything tangible. This is probably what separates the great thinkers from the great doers. Or maybe just the people who get paid from the people who don’t. But still, I didn’t do the work.

I didn’t do the work, but I did make tea, because a well-hydrated person is a well-functioning person, and then I made ramen eggs, because you can’t do good work on an empty stomach, and then I watched a 12-minute video on how to make ramen eggs, because mastery matters. And then I realized that my ramen egg is, in fact, superior to the ones on YouTube, and definitely better than the ones you get at a restaurant, because mine has the exact, divine balance of soy, mirin, and patience that the world fails to recognize. This revelation required a moment of quiet reflection, followed by another cup of tea. Inner-harmony this time. And when I returned, I still didn’t do the work.

I didn’t do the work, but I will. Or maybe I won’t. Because despite my elaborate self-justifications, despite my ability to turn my lack of productivity into an Olympic event, I know the work is worth doing. But also, maybe there is no work. Maybe the work was a construct all along, a shimmering illusion in the grand existential noodle bowl of life. Maybe the real achievement was the ramen eggs I perfected along the way. And when I do—or don’t—do the work, at least I’ll be well-fed.