A field guide to joyful unproductivity
The lexicon and lost world of doing, gloriously, nothing.
“Chillinism cannot be pursued. It can only be experienced.”
Everything below hangs from here. A worldview, not a to-do list - the one philosophy you betray by trying.
The softly self-cancelling philosophy of joyful purposelessness. You don't follow it; you drift into it - carried not by ambition but by the graceful refusal of it.
The core tenet that nearly everything can, in fact, be done later.
“She lived faithfully by the Doctrine of Later.”
The conditions you sink into. You fall into these - you never quite achieve them.
The quiet wealth of having nothing urgent to do, and pottering about accordingly.
“By noon she'd reached peak faffluence: tea made, plants watered, nothing accomplished.”
The deep contentment of a well-timed afternoon sleep.
The belief that strategic rest extends your life.
Spiritual commitment to remaining under the covers.
The contented solitude of just you and the feed, with no one needing anything.
“She guarded her evening scrollitude the way a monk guards silence.”
The things you do - or rather, un-do. Note the un-: in Chillinism, the verbs undo rather than do.
To deliberately strip all haste from a thing.
To release a task, or a whole day, from the tyranny of its due date.
“I'm going to undeadline my day.”
To strip a day, or yourself, of any goal or intention; to remove the point, on purpose.
To do nothing, but beautifully and on purpose.
To lie in bed awake but unbothered, thinking gently about nothing.
The deliberate, committed pursuit of the infinite feed as a craft rather than a guilty accident.
Who lives all this. Membership is involuntary, and pleasant.
Anyone who lives by Chillinism, which is to say anyone who has stopped trying. The broadest of the tribes; you are likely one already.
“We are all Chillinists now, at least we were going to try to be.”
The loose, unjoined tribe of Chillinism; those who have unpurposed. You join by accident.
“The Unpurposites gathered on the sofa, as ever, entirely by accident.”
The devout faithful of Restafarianism.
“He's been a practising Restafarian since roughly 2pm.”
A denomination within the wider world of Chillinism - same drift, more ceremony.
A full belief system organised around lying down.
A personal celebration of doing nothing, observed with full ceremony; the movement's high holy day.
“We're throwing a restival this weekend - no plans, by invitation only.”
Where it all takes place. Lethargia you can live in; Chillantis you only ever glimpse - both reached the same way, by not trying.
The homeland of the Unpurposites; a land where nothing is owed and no one is expected.
“Somewhere beyond the inbox lies Lethargia.”
The sunken, half-mythical paradise of doing nothing; a lost kingdom beneath the cushions where nothing was ever due. You can't sail there on purpose - you can only drift, and surface to find you'd arrived.
“For one golden Sunday hour, he was sure he'd touched the shores of Chillantis.”