The day with nothing in it

Somewhere in the beliefs there's one that's true and that nobody says out loud. It's that on many days the treat is the only thing in the day that was good. Not the best thing. The only one. And if that's so, the daily isn't the problem. It's the sign of one.

Look at the day the treat is ending. Up, out, work or the children or both, back, and then the hour. In between there may have been nothing that was for you, nothing chosen, nothing you'd mention if someone asked what you did today. That isn't a failing. It's how a lot of adult days go. But it means the treat is being asked to be the whole of the good in a day, and a glass of wine can't be that, and a bar of chocolate can't, and an episode can't. They're small pleasures, sized for a day that already has something in it. Asked to be the whole thing, they're too small, which is why they get repeated, and topped up, and why the guilt comes.

The NHS has a page on five things that evidence suggests help mental wellbeing. Connect with other people. Be physically active. Learn new skills. Give to others. Pay attention to the present moment. It's the plainest list in the world and I'm not going to dress it up. But look at what's on it and what isn't. None of the five is a treat. All five are things that put something into the day rather than at the end of it. And a day with one of them in it, a walk, a call, twenty minutes at something you're learning, is a day that doesn't need the treat to be the good bit, because it already had one.

So here's my reading, and it's the centre of the book. The daily is a lid on an empty day. It goes on at six and it covers the fact that nothing happened, and it does that well enough that you don't have to notice. Take the lid off, on a blank day, and you'll see the day. That's uncomfortable, and it's the discomfort that sends people back to the daily, because seeing an empty day is worse than a flat evening. But the empty day is the thing to fix, and it can be, with something small and chosen put into it before six. Once the day has something in it, the treat can go back to being a treat, because it's no longer carrying the day.

If the day has had nothing in it for weeks, most days, and nothing feels good including the treat, that's the preface's third caution, and it's a GP. An empty fortnight isn't a habit.