Like everybody else, when I don't know what else to do, I seem to go in for catching colds.

In Nathan’s dry, self-mocking manner, the line turns an ordinary nuisance—catching a cold—into a comic “default activity,” as if illness were a hobby one takes up when life offers no better occupation. The humor depends on deflation: instead of grand anxieties or existential crises, the speaker’s fallback is something petty and bodily. It also hints at a broader modern sensibility Nathan often skewered: the tendency to dramatize minor discomforts, or to let inertia and vague dissatisfaction express themselves through physical complaint. The quip’s resigned tone (“like everybody else”) makes it feel both personal and broadly social.