Coping with the day when nothing is wrong

Ah ! que la vie est quotidienne. (Ah, daily life seems so routine!)
        — Jules Laforgue

This morning, at the time of writing, I am lying in bed conducting negotiations of the most delicate and least consequential kind.

Not with a government, nor with a bank manager, nor even with the Ecuadorian tax authorities, who at least provide documentation to justify concern. No, this is a private summit between myself and a jar of coffee waiting patiently in the kitchen, its aroma still hypothetical, its temperature still requiring application of a blue flame, its powers of stimulation widely advertised, but not yet personally confirmed.

The question under discussion is whether life, as presently arranged, truly requires my immediate participation.

Nothing is wrong, which is the curious part.

No crisis presses, no Cuenca High Life deadline looms, no Whatsapp messages with news likely to rearrange the structure of the day. Cuenca continues outside the window performing its morning routines, while I remain horizontal, contemplating the surprising effort involved in standing up.

A Day in Which Nothing Happens
There is, I suspect, a literary precedent for this condition.

James Joyce constructed Ulysses around a single day in Dublin during which very little of conventional importance occurs. No wars are won, no empires collapse, and no dramatic reversals of fortune disturb the narrative. A man walks, observes, remembers, eats, worries, and drifts through the ordinary business of existence, proving that an entire universe of thought can unfold inside a day that appears, from the outside, to contain almost nothing at all.

Retirement offers a similar narrative structure, though without academic conferences devoted to its interpretation.

The Explateau
I recently read an article describing a phase familiar to long-term expatriates, a period when the early energy of relocation yields to something more stable and, depending on one’s temperament, more ambiguous.

At first, everything sparkles with difference. Streets, prices, customs, systems, bureaucratic peculiarities, and even supermarket confusion provide a steady stream of stimulation. One is learning constantly, adapting continuously, noticing everything and thinking of becoming a content maker with videos of the Feria Libre posted on YouTube

Years later, novelty gives way to competence. One knows how to pay bills without getting out of bed, how to navigate one’s way to the pharmacy, which cafés serve respectable coffee, and which merely serve hot disappointment. Life becomes smoother, more predictable, and less demanding.

Which was, naturally, the entire point of moving to Cuenca.

Yet predictability, having performed its duties admirably, sometimes removes not only friction but also momentum, leaving behind what might be described, in suitably knowing tones, as expatriate ennui.

The Stock Market Alarm Clock
My mornings now possess a structure that would have baffled my younger self.

I often remain in bed until the U.S. stock market opens. Only then do I rise, prepare coffee, and examine the financial world with the earnest concentration of a man whose retirement depends not upon heroic labour but upon dividend yields, tiny price oscillations, profits taken, and the behaviour of strangers clicking “buy” and “sell” thousands of miles away.

Coffee comes first, then portfolio review. Then the ceremonial inquiry: whether anything in the global economy requires my intervention today, or whether I may safely resume the business of existing.

This is not the life rhythm depicted in glossy expatriate brochures, though it possesses the undeniable virtue of accuracy.

Laforgue and Youthful Misunderstandings
My fondness for Laforgue is not entirely academic.

More than fifty years ago, as a student with literary ambitions exceeding both my talent and emotional stability, I wrote a pastiche of a Jules Laforgue poem that was published in a student magazine. The result was so convincingly melancholic that several young women approached me afterward with genuine concern, asking whether I was truly as depressed as the verses suggested and whether there was anything they could do to make me feel better.

I remember being faintly flattered, flummoxed and alarmed that something I had written as a joke in an idle moment could have such an impact. It was my first lesson in the delicate boundary between irony and diagnosis.

The Pool Principle
Today I have planned to go swimming, not from athletic zeal but from a form of internal accounting that feels suspiciously like compliance management.

Tomorrow I am meeting The Editor for lunch. If swimming is postponed again, I will have missed three consecutive days of exercise. One day is good, two days implies rest, three days implies laziness and senility.

Thus, I am not going because I crave exertion. I am going because my mind, having retired from external employment, has appointed itself supervisor of personal standards.

This decision, once made, triggers a secondary cascade of obligations.

If I am going swimming today, then according to the procedure manual, I must first visit the laundry room, retrieve my dry swimming trunks, and put them on under my trousers with the pragmatic foresight of a man preparing for contingencies rather than adventure. Dry underwear must be located, a suitable towel must be selected and a choice of socks must be considered. Change for a post-swim taxi fare if it is raining must be remembered, and a rolled umbrella set aside. Each item joins the pre-departure shopping cart of necessity, because experience has taught me that neglecting any one of these apparently trivial components results in inconvenience later, usually in the middle of a downpour.

Retirement does not eliminate structure, it merely relocates management responsibilities inward.

Ennui, Depression, and Other Misdiagnoses
There is a fine line between expatriate ennui and clinical depression, between the mild flattening of motivation that accompanies routine and the heavier condition in which pleasure, curiosity, and engagement genuinely recede.

Lying in bed debating coffee is not, in itself, pathology and does not require Prozac.

But neither is every prolonged disengagement entirely benign.

Routine Without Drama
Routine is not failure, and predictability is not decay. A day in which nothing alarming happens remains, by most historical standards, a spectacular success. Our ancestors endured plagues and pandemics, wars, shortages, and uncertainties that would make modern restlessness appear an almost luxurious complaint.

Yet humans acclimatise rapidly to comfort, then wonder why comfort feels so unremarkable once achieved. Life becomes maintenance–pleasant maintenance, certainly, but maintenance nonetheless.

Coffee as Commitment
Eventually, I will rise, not because of destiny nor revelation, but because coffee grows cold.

I will go swimming, not because I crave the exercise, but because I dislike the idea of explaining to myself why I skipped the plunge.

Life, at this stage, proceeds less through passion than through modest acts of negotiated compliance, small decisions that keep the machinery of existence turning without requiring unnecessary heroics.

Nothing is wrong today, which is the achievement of a lifetime of preparing for just such an eventuality.