The Case for Doing Nothing in August

August is the month America forgets to schedule. September has its returns, its sharpened pencils, its sense of a year restarting. July has the flag and the fireworks. August simply sits there, hot and undemanding, and we have never quite known what to do with it.

For most of the country's history that was the point. The agricultural calendar left a gap between the last cultivation and the harvest, and August fell into it. The work was done; the reward had not arrived. What filled the space was porch-sitting, river-swimming, and the particular boredom that children remember for the rest of their lives.

The month we industrialised

Air conditioning changed the shape of the American August more than any other invention. Before it, the heat enforced a slowness that no employer could argue with. Cities emptied. Offices kept short hours. After it, August became simply another month with better light.

We did not lose the slow month. We air-conditioned it and sent everyone back to work.

What remains is a residue — the out-of-office reply, the thinner traffic on a Friday, the sense that nobody will really mind if a decision waits until after Labor Day. It is not much. But it is worth defending.

How to spend it

Badly, is the answer. Spend it badly. Read something long and forget the plot. Cook something that takes four hours on a day when nobody is hungry. Drive somewhere without checking how far it is.

The month will be over soon enough, and the calendar will start asking things of you again.