the next part

He walked out the front door and thought, what to do with all of these cats? Because the cats just kept showing up. But that wasn't the real problem. The real problem was that he didn't know what was going to happen on the series finale of his favorite TV show. The real problem was that he hadn't emailed his best friend from high school back, because he was trying to think of a cool way to say that he was working at a Blockbuster that was currently going out of business.
The real problem was thinking of a different dinner that wasn't spaghetti and red sauce out of a jar.

He sat down on the stoop and let the cats slowly slink back out of the bushes because they felt a kindred spirit in him. But the joke was on them, because he cared nothing.
He took a picture of himself on his phone, and looked at it for a minute. After a full three minutes, he deleted the picture and checked his real mail in his real mailbox and found nothing good.

Some days he spent whole hours of his free time in this fashion. Just looking down the street. Just standing with a hose in his hand, mildly watering the lawn when he could just buy a sprinkler instead.

He liked to think he was interrupting someone else's life when they'd jog by, or walk their dog by his house, or a kid would ride a bike past him, and he'd try to get ideas, on what to do with all the free time. The ideas would always sound the same.
"Sandwich," the ideas would say. "Sandwich," he would mumble, and think about what ingredients were in the crisper. In the refrigerator.
"Pepsi," would be the next idea, if he kept thinking pretty hard.
And then after, "Potato chips," the next idea would inevitably be the title of a video game, which I don't know the name of, because I'm actually a girl, telling you this story. Sorry.

But the ideas would just drift off after that, to someone else's head. And he would think about picking up the phone and making a phone call, but it was just easier to let it slip by until a different day. Because, there will be lots of days, and lots of phone calls. Even doctor's appointments, he could iron out. That would be a real accomplishment if he made a doctor appointment sometime this month. But the best part would be, when the months would just keep going by, and then eventually one month, something would happen to him.

And it would be a big something. It would be a really nice thing to happen to a guy like him.