Forty Minutes at the Laundromat, Waiting for the Wash to Finish

The blue plastic chair had an old coffee stain dried hard along its edge, and that Sunday afternoon it was the only seat left in the shop. I sat down. The small screen on machine seven said forty minutes to go.

Forty minutes. Not long, not short, just enough to see clearly that I had nothing to do. On my left a married couple was folding a bedsheet between them, each holding two corners, stepping toward each other and then back. On my right a few students burst out laughing at something on a phone. I had a bag of laundry, a phone with a little battery left, and the familiar feeling that everyone in this place had come with someone.

I had lived in Da Nang for almost a year, working as a construction site supervisor, renting a room at the head of an alley. The room had nowhere to dry clothes except a steel wire strung across the window, so every weekend I carried my bag to the coin laundry at the end of the lane. And every weekend those forty minutes went by in exactly one way: sit down, pull out the phone, scroll, scroll, scroll, until the machine beeped.

If you have ever sat in a waiting place where everyone around you had company, you know that small, stubborn feeling. Not quite sadness. Just a slightly empty spot beside you, and your eyes looking around for something to land on.

This is not about how sitting alone among people takes courage. It is also not a trick for turning forty minutes of laundry into a meditation, or a way to stop feeling out of place in a shop. It is much smaller than that: one person trying to change one thing, the way he waits, and telling what showed up when that one thing was taken away.

The First Sunday, I Tried to Sit Through All Forty Minutes

The phone is not only for looking at

Twenty to six in the evening. I scanned the code to pay, heard the door lock with one dry click, then water running in, then a low, steady spin starting up. The shop smelled of rose fabric softener mixed with the dry heat of the row of dryers behind me. I sat in the blue chair and turned my phone face down on my lap. Not ten seconds later my right hand was already sliding into my pocket.

I had always told myself I scrolled because I was bored. Bored, yes. But around the fifth minute I noticed something else going on: holding a phone is a way of telling the whole shop that I have something to do. Sitting empty-handed among couples and groups looks like being left behind, and the phone is a little sign I hold up. No, really, I am busy.

Seeing that explained why the forty minutes felt so heavy. I was not only enduring an empty stretch of time. I was enduring the feeling of being seen as empty. And nobody in the shop was looking at me at all. That gaze was one I had built myself, then propped up with a screen.

Right then, the girl at the next machine turned toward me.

"Excuse me, is machine eight free?"

"It is. Press the green button first, then scan the code."

"Oh, thank you."

Three lines, done. What I noticed was that while I said them my phone was lying face down on my lap, and I was sitting in the middle of the shop without feeling I needed to shield myself. That was all. But it was enough for me to remember.

The first ten minutes, and how to tell you are doing it right

How to know you are doing it right is not feeling peaceful. In the first few tries that is rare. The sign is your hand: every time I caught it already about to slide into my pocket before I had decided anything, and catching it was already a step.

The first time, ten minutes felt absurdly long. A washing machine turning is slightly funny to watch, then slightly sad, then just a washing machine turning. I looked around more than usual, and at one point I wanted to leave. After a week, some people say those ten minutes get shorter, some find them exactly the same, and some find them more boring. For me it was the second, and then the first a week later. It does not run the same for everyone.

On busy days, when I had a heavy bag or was tired through, I kept exactly one minute: the first minute after pressing start, phone staying in my pocket, eyes on the glass. After that minute, I could do whatever I liked. This short version is the one I used most.

There was one place I failed all of that first week, and it sounded perfectly reasonable: turning the ten minutes into a contest. Today I last fifteen minutes without touching the phone, tomorrow I push for twenty. It is tempting because it can be measured, scored, and I am someone who is used to working with numbers. But by then the phone had changed places in my head: it was no longer something I scrolled but something I forbade, and my eyes stayed glued to where it lay. Drop the number. Keep one thing only, which is watching one item in the machine. As for the phone, anyone who wants to understand what they are scrolling for might read this piece on scrolling for thirty minutes and not remembering what you saw.

The Third Sunday, I Almost Went Home

Forget it. Go home. Come back for the clothes tomorrow.

I already paid.

So come back tomorrow.

That was the conversation in my head, standing at the shop door that day. The place was packed. No chairs left, not even a spot to put the bag down, and I had to stand against the wall between two rows of dryers, where the hot air blew on the back of my neck. In front of me sat an old woman with her grandchild sorting socks into pairs, a group of friends in matching company T-shirts, and the couple from the week before, folding the bedsheet between them again.

No chair left, and the story I kept reading

I stood there and started reading them. That couple must be so happy. That group must be like this every weekend. The old woman has her grandchild beside her. One caption per person, written fast, never checked.

The nearest explanation is: the shop is crowded, so I feel alone. But after a few more minutes standing there, it looked like something else entirely. I was not looking at them. I was taking the three seconds I could see of each person, building a whole story out of it, and then setting that story next to the worst part of myself. The two were never the same size, so I lost. The week before, that same couple had sat next to each other for twenty minutes barely speaking, and I had read it as "they have each other," when it could just as easily have been silence over something unfinished. I did not know. I have never known.

Three small things to look at when the eyes start comparing

That day I tried giving my eyes a different job. I did not force myself to stop comparing, because forcing makes it stronger. I just handed the eyes something else:

1. Find one small, harmless thing in the shop that has nothing to do with anyone: an odd sock in a basket, a button on the floor near a chair leg, a trail of water running down a dryer window.
2. Look at it long enough to describe its colour and shape in two sentences in your head.
3. Find a second and a third small thing, then go back to watching your own machine.

The first time I thought this was a little silly, and it was: I stood there describing a button like someone doing a school writing assignment. But somewhere between the second thing and the third, the commentary about the people around me went quiet for a while. It did not disappear. It just went quiet for a while. The next week, some days it stayed quiet longer, some days it did not, and I stopped keeping track of which day was which. On busy days, one thing is enough. Just one.

Where I used to believe the wrong thing was a piece of advice that sounds so well-meant: just strike up a conversation with the person next to you, so you feel less alone. I tried exactly once. I turned to a man standing by the dryers and asked how many kilos this machine takes, and he mumbled without turning his head, and I stood there feeling more alone than when I started. Not because he was at fault. Because I had made the conversation a task to finish, and a task leaves no room for a real question to come up. The exchange with the girl in the first week happened because she needed to know which machine was free, not because I needed someone to talk to. From the outside the two look the same. Inside they are completely different.

A Month Later, Nothing Big Had Happened

The owner of the shop was wiping the glass of the dryers with a grey cloth. I came in, scanned my code, picked machine seven. She did not turn around, just spoke over her shoulder:

"Just one load today?"

"Yes, one load."

"Somebody said machine seven was shaking a bit yesterday. Keep an eye on it for me."

That was all. I sat down, looked at the glass door of the machine, and realised I had not pulled out my phone and had not even thought about it.

I do not want to write a pretty ending. I did not feel less alone in the sense of something going away. If anything changed, it was smaller and stranger: those forty minutes stopped feeling like a gap that had to be filled in, and began to feel like a stretch that belonged to me. Before, every time I sat doing nothing I felt I owed somebody an explanation for why I was doing nothing. Now I need that less. Not because I learned anything clever, but because the thing I thought the whole shop was watching turned out never to have been there.

This can be carried outside the shop, but not to every place at once. I tried it at every waiting spot, and after two days I was worn out and dropped all of it. Now I pick exactly one waiting place a week: this week it is the rice stall while someone packs my order, another week it is ninety seconds at a red light on the way home. One place is enough.

If You Try a Few Times and Nothing Seems to Change

This happens more often than people say, so let me say it plainly.

The first common reason: you sit watching the machine turn and feel only bored and restless, and your mind keeps running through Friday at the office. That is not a sign you are doing it wrong. Sitting still makes whatever is noisy sound louder. The way forward is to give your hands a job: fold the things that are already dry, or hold a small notebook without having to write anything in it. A task for the hands is often easier to sit with than sitting empty.

The second reason: the wrong place. The shop is too loud, too bright, or you sit facing exactly where people fold a bedsheet together, and all you can see is what you do not have. No need to force it. Change the place: sit outside on the step if there is one, or press start and walk a short loop around the alley. What to keep is a stretch of waiting where you are not building extra watchers for yourself, and it does not matter where that happens. One day I carried a cup of tea along, a bit like drinking tea alone, and the forty minutes passed lighter.

And one thing few people mention: some days those forty minutes make the whole evening heavier. If you find yourself wishing it would never end, or wishing it would end right now so you do not have to sit with yourself, drop this exercise and try something else. A small trick about how you wait is not the place to settle bigger things.

The machine beeped three times. The door clicked open, and warmth and the smell of dry cloth came out against my face. I folded each piece into the bag.

When to seek professional support

This article is one person's account of how he waited in a laundromat, and a few small things you can try. It cannot replace treatment, and I am not promising it will make loneliness go away.

But here are a few signs you should bring to a professional, rather than carrying them alone:

• The feeling of loneliness has lasted for weeks, with no day that feels lighter.
• You do not want to see anyone at all, including people you trust.
• Your sleep or your eating has been clearly thrown off for many days in a row.
• You think about hurting yourself, even if it is just a passing thought.

The last point cannot wait. Speak with someone you trust, today. The Emergency Support page explains what holds true in moments like that.

Seeking out a professional to talk to does not mean your situation is too heavy. It is more like handing a heavy load to someone with free hands, instead of carrying it another stretch alone.