What Should I Do Tonight?
A small menu for when the day is technically over and you have no idea what to do with yourself
There's a moment around 7 p.m. when the day's obligations have all been met or abandoned, and you're standing in the kitchen holding nothing. You have a few hours before bed. You don't particularly want to spend all of them on your phone.
You've also read the advice, and the advice is "do something else," which is remarkably unhelpful when your brain is tired and you can't name a single thing you'd want to do.
I think the trouble is that "what do you feel like doing?" is a hard question at the end of a long day. Most of us can't answer it. But "how do you feel?" is easier, and the answer to that tends to point somewhere.
So this isn't a plan. It's a menu. Figure out which of these describes you tonight, and pick something from that section. There's no productivity requirement, and nobody needs the evening to be memorable. We're just trying to have an evening instead of accidentally scrolling through the whole thing.
I'm tired
You don't need stimulation. You need somewhere soft to land.
Tonight's menu:
Take a shower earlier than usual. Then put on the clothes you'd normally save for right before bed. Nobody's checking the time.
Make a drink and sit somewhere comfortable. Tea, coffee, cocoa, or sparkling water in a needlessly nice glass.
Watch one thing you actually chose. A movie you've been meaning to see, a documentary, one episode of something good. Not "whatever started playing while I looked at my phone."
Read ten pages. Ten is enough.
Put on an album and lie down. Listening to music can still be the entire activity.
Do something repetitive with your hands. Knit, color, do a puzzle, mend something, doodle.
Go to bed ridiculously early. Sometimes there's no deeper problem.
You're tired. That's the whole diagnosis.
I'm bored
Good. Boredom is not an emergency, and I've started to think it might be your brain finally looking around for something interesting, which it hasn't had the chance to do in a while.
Tonight's menu:
Go to the library and choose a subject you know nothing about.
Look up the history of something ordinary in your house. Coffee, wallpaper, buttons, refrigerators, perfume, lamps. Pick one and follow the rabbit hole. Lamps have more of a story than you'd expect.
Take yourself somewhere you wouldn't normally bother going on a weeknight.
Find a movie made before you were born and watch it.
Learn ten words in another language.
Walk around your neighborhood and photograph five interesting things. You'll be surprised how many there are once you're looking.
Start a completely unnecessary project. Make a collage, rearrange a shelf, sketch your kitchen, build a playlist, bake something unreasonably complicated.
Boredom and curiosity live closer together than most people realize.
I'm restless
Sitting on the couch isn't working. Your brain wants something to happen, though it doesn't need to be important. It just needs to be something.
Tonight's menu:
Leave the house. Walk around a bookstore, get coffee, go to the grocery store and buy one ridiculous snack, or drive somewhere with a good view.
Take a long walk without trying to accomplish anything.
Put music on and clean one room. Your house doesn't need optimizing. Your body just needs somewhere to put the restless energy, and a sink full of dishes is a fine place.
Try a new recipe.
Go somewhere you've driven past a hundred times but never entered. There's a place near you that you've been curious about for years. Tonight is as good as any.
Do something physical. Stretch, bike, garden, walk, or dance badly in your kitchen. Nobody's watching, and dancing badly is more fun than dancing well.
Make tomorrow slightly more interesting. Plan breakfast somewhere, pick a new route home, decide to stop at the library after work, put something on the calendar.
Sometimes restlessness isn't asking for more content. It's asking for a change of scenery, or something to look forward to.
I'm lonely
I'd guess you don't need another hour of watching other people have lives online, which tends to make this particular feeling worse. You might need a little actual human contact instead.
Tonight's menu:
Call someone. Not because you have news. Call because you like them.
Send the first text. "Want to get coffee this week?" There. Administrative friendship accomplished.
Ask someone to go for a walk.
Go somewhere people are. A library, café, bookstore, community event, or park. You don't have to talk to anyone. Being near other people helps.
Play a game with someone in your house.
Eat dinner together without everybody disappearing into separate screens.
Write someone a real note or letter.
And if everybody is busy tonight, make one actual plan for later in the week. Loneliness doesn't always have an immediate fix. Sometimes what it needs is something on the calendar.
I'm creative
Please don't spend the next two hours looking for inspiration. You already found the urge, which is the hard part. Use it before it wanders off.
Tonight's menu:
Make something badly. Bad painting, bad poem, bad song, bad sketch. Make the thing before your standards arrive and start making notes.
Give yourself one tiny creative assignment. Photograph ten ordinary objects. Write 300 words. Draw the view from your window. Make a collage from a single magazine.
Finish something tiny instead of starting something enormous.
Make something you will never post. No audience, no engagement, no niche. Just yours.
Pull out supplies you haven't touched in months.
Recreate something you admire, as practice.
Follow the weird idea. The unnecessary one, the one that doesn't fit anything else you're working on. Especially that one.
I'm overstimulated
Your brain has received enough information for one day, and I'd suggest not giving it any more assignments.
Tonight's menu:
Put your phone somewhere else for twenty minutes. Not forever. We're not fleeing civilization. Just twenty minutes.
Turn off the overhead lights. This is a surprisingly effective intervention for something that costs nothing.
Take a quiet shower. No podcast, no video, no additional input.
Make something warm to drink and sit somewhere without entertainment.
Do one slow physical task. Fold laundry, wash dishes, water plants, brush the dog, make the bed.
Read something on paper.
Sit outside. Listen to whatever your particular corner of the world sounds like tonight.
A lot of us treat a tired brain as a content problem, as though the right video would fix it. I don't think that's usually true. Sometimes it just needs less.
I don't even know what I feel
Fair. Plenty of evenings are like that.
Here's the emergency menu. Close your eyes and point if you have to:
Leave the house.
Take a shower.
Call someone.
Read ten pages.
Walk for twenty minutes.
Make something.
Listen to an album.
Go somewhere interesting online instead of opening social media.
Watch a movie.
Go to bed.
That's enough choices. You don't have to work out why you want any of them.
One last thing
You don't have to make tonight count. You don't need to reclaim your evening, maximize your free time, practice seven hobbies, finish a book, or build a beautiful nighttime ritual. I'm not sure any of us has ever done that on a Wednesday.
Some evenings are interesting, and some are social. Some are quiet. Some involve eating cereal while watching a documentary about ancient shipwrecks, which I'd argue is a perfectly good use of a night. A good life has room for all of them.
I'm not trying to optimize your evening. I'd just like you to be there for it.
What's on your menu when nothing else is? I'm curious what the default is in your house.
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