Robert Wringham is tapping into the healing power of loafing – and he wants you to join him

For the next six months, I’ll be doing practically nothing. I’ve been telling others it’s a “sabbatical” because that’s a word people seem to recognise and broadly approve of, but really I’ve just had enough and I want a proper skive.

2024 was a busy year. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed most of my 2024 activity and I’ll benefit from the fruits of it all, hopefully, for years to come. But having something scheduled every day – somewhere to be, something to achieve, something to cross off a list – is no idler’s design for life. It’s not mine, it’s not yours, and if it ever seems we’ve veered off course, drastic action should be taken.

Hence the next six months. Corrective action. Or, as the case may be, inaction.

What I won’t be doing:

grubbing for money
seeking attention
raising my profile
helping with others’ harebrained schemes
starting anything new.

What I will be doing:

pottering
futzing
dreaming
healing
ensuring my feet are higher than my head.

This year, inertia will be my friend. The grunting up-hill cycle will pay off with a merry roll down. I will do little more strenuous than grow my hair.

The aim is to heal the wounds of a year of action, to reassert a leisurely status quo, and to learn how to gaze into the middle distance again without feeling inspired to act.

A small amount of creative work is permissible when it feels right. This means no deadlines and no ambitions. It should feel like “colouring in” used to feel when you were 7 or 8, preferably done while lying on your tummy in front of the fire, legs kicking up playfully behind you, something easy on the turntable in the background.

Hmm, what else? I haven’t played a computer game since about 1996 because, rightly or wrongly, I’ve been too busy doing less squanderous things, so I’m going to give that a go. My wife bought me a replica Sega Megadrive control pad for Christmas, which can be shoved into a laptop USB to play once-expensive and lusted-after games now freely downloaded as “ROMs” from the Web.

I daresay I’ll read, but I’ll stick to unedifying literature. There’s a tonne of filthy unread treasure on my shelf, including Melissa Broder’s Milk Fed (which looks funny and rude), Tomas Espedal’s Tramp (meandering, lyrical), Dan Rhodes’ Sour Grapes (indulgent, spiteful) and June Gibbons’ The Pepsi-Cola Addict (outsiderish, bananas). I don’t think I can go wrong with those.

Maybe I’ll do more drugs. How’s that for a new year’s resolution? Chewable psilocybin, cannabis and melatonin seem to be everywhere at the moment and are obviously the best things ever invented. Moshfeghian stupor awaits.

I want to chew Hubba-Bubba to see how big I can get the bubbles. Maybe I’ll measure them and keep a log. Proper time-wasting stuff.

I’ve also made a Dave Lister (from Red Dwarf) jacket, which I plan to wear for wilful slobbing. I want to get custard and gravy marks all down it. I’ve been far too Rimmerish of late.

It occurs to me that a lot of what I want to do over the next six months is return to a state of mind I had in the 1990s to the turn of the millennium, a time when I felt truly untroubled even as things exploded around our ears (IRA, 9/11, Iraq). I wonder how successful in that I will be? I have more at stake now and the explosions might be even bigger.

Really though, I refuse to have plans. I reserve the right not to pick up that gaming pad or any of those books or anything else at all. I invite you to do the same. If you can’t take the time off now, why not plan to take it off sometime? Mark out a couple of months in your diary, tell the world what you’re doing and why.

I have only two appointments for the foreseeable future: the dentist on January 15th (whom I may yet stand up) and “A Drink with the Idler” on the 16th (which I won’t).

Why not come along to our drink? It’s free for Academy members or £7.50 for non-members. Tom and Mark will be there, and together we’ll spend an hour or two discussing the practicalities of escape and the ideal of doing nothing.

Robert Wringham is a writer-comedian and publisher of New Escapologist magazine. He is writer and presenter of the Idler Academy course “How to Escape”, a guide to autonomy in the modern world. He is also author and co-author of a number of books including The Good Life for Wage Slaves (P&H, 2020), Escape Everything! (Unbound, 2016 & 2021), Melt It: The Book of the Iceman (Go Faster Stripe, 2022) and Rub-a-Dub-Dub (P&H, 2023), a novel.

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