Day 2–642 Things to Write About

You are an astronaut. Describe your perfect day

Photo by History in HD on Unsplash

You are an astronaut. Describe your perfect day

I’m not Ryland Grace or Mark Watney. I’m just a normal astrologer-turned-astronaut who was assigned to this mission to save Earth from an unexplainable force that ordinary people simply cannot comprehend.

It’s our 234th day on this station, and let me tell you what a normal-to-you-but-perfect-for-me day would look like.

Well, first things first, I’d float out of my sleeping bag, and it might take a few seconds for reality to settle in and remind me where I am. A perfect day would also not involve Berger — our engineer — getting in my way. And yes, I would absolutely look out the window and take in the beautiful, trillion-dollar view that not many people can afford from their bedroom window: Earth.

After breakfast with my crew — eggs and coffee with a drop of milk, because I’m trying to limit my dairy intake and, more importantly, because milk is scarce up here — I would spend the morning conducting scientific experiments. They’re confidential, so I can’t go into the details, but a perfect day would involve no accidents whatsoever.

In the afternoon, after a good meal of beef stew or a chicken sandwich, I would go on a Moonwalk. Well, not that Moonwalk. It’s actually a dance-off among the crew. Every week we do one of these. Someone who clearly doesn’t like fun or joy gets to be the judge, picks the music, and the volunteers dance their hearts out to win whatever prize they want.

Yeah, sometimes the prize is a limited slice of chocolate cake. Sometimes it’s getting to skip your daily task altogether. Simple as that. And on a perfect day, I’d absolutely win the damn thing and either skip my task or dump all my work onto Berger’s plate. Then I’d spend an embarrassing long time in the screening room watching the same five movies we have on repeat.

After dinner, which may involve a chicken pot pie and a crisp can of Diet Coke, I’d fuck off to bed. Haha perfect day.