A dock…anywhere
I’ve never been formally diagnosed with ADHD, but if a doctor told me I had it, I wouldn’t blink. Here’s how I describe my brain: imagine a highway with eight or ten lanes of thought-traffic, all moving at once, all the time. No off-ramps, no red lights. Just constant motion. It’s exhausting in a way that’s hard to explain to people whose mental highway has, you know, two lanes and a shoulder to pull into.
This past week, my highway didn’t just stay busy — it jammed…hard! Everything backed up. I struggled more than I have in a long time.
And the one thing I’ve been looking forward to through all of it is absurdly simple: sitting on the dock.
It’s raining right now, which would normally be a reason to stay inside. Instead it feels like exactly the right kind of day for it.
Here’s the thing about the dock — when I sit there, the brain traffic doesn’t just slow down. The traffic slowly thins out and disappears entirely, and at least for a little while, there’s just… one quiet road, going nowhere in particular.
I don’t want to play pool. I don’t want to golf. I don’t want to hike, and — tellingly, for someone who is writing — I don’t even really want to write I just want to sit on the dock and recharge.
I hope the people around me understand that this isn’t me being antisocial or lazy.
It’s self maintenance.
So here I sit, on a dock at Crowe Lake, a nice dock, but nothing really special about it — On a gray day, the lake in front of me looks like what…pewter?
I sit here and watch. That’s it. That’s the whole activity.
And somehow, it’s putting me back together.
Why Doing “Nothing” Works
We live in a culture that treats rest like a reward you earn after productivity, or worse, as another task to optimize. But there’s something different happening on a dock, in a rocking chair, on a long walk with no destination. The mind isn’t being entertained or informed — it’s being given room to settle. Psychologists call this “soft fascination”: the kind of gentle, undemanding attention that water, clouds, or fire naturally pull from us, without draining our mental reserves the way traffic or a crowded inbox does.
A gray day, it turns out, might even help. There’s no glare, no urgency, nothing performing for you. Just quiet.
It’s Rarely About the Activity Itself
Ask ten people how they recharge and you’ll get ten different rituals — running before sunrise, kneading bread dough, losing an afternoon to a garden bed, sitting in a parked car in the driveway for five extra minutes before going inside. On the surface, these have nothing in common. But underneath, they usually share a few things:
- Low stakes. Nothing to win, prove, or finish.
- A slower rhythm than the rest of daily life.
- Enough repetition or stillness that the mind stops narrating and starts noticing.
- A place or object that isn’t asking anything of you — a lake doesn’t need a response.
The Case for Naming Your Dock
Maybe the real value of a post like this isn’t convincing anyone that sitting still is good for them — most people already suspect that. It’s giving them permission to take their version seriously. To say, out loud, “I need forty minutes at the lake” or “I need to walk with no phone” without treating it as indulgent or unproductive.
So: what’s your dock?