You have a good point tho.
By 'nothing', I refer to the total absence. However it's very hard to unlearn something that's so integrated in our way of perceiving: think of time - it's very hard to realize that we invented time for multiple reasons, but time itself does not exist, we only 'create' it when we measure it. So, we create something when it's being measured. How can 'nothing' be measured then? It can, when you are the one who decides what a second or an hour means, thus we can see that time is an artificial invention, to help us keep track and organize ourselves and find out more about the world we live in etc. That being said, it only resumes to the way we perceive certain things, as a proof that you asked me if I mean 'nothing' as a total absence or the quantum vacuum effect; sure, you wanted to clarify that, but most (all) people, even geniuses, don't mind about analyzing if certain 'truths' are something they should involve in certain equations, yet they do because they (we) perceive many things as an incontestable truth that are part of us.
Total absence does not exist. this statement, is full of paradox because we perceive it like that. it is logical in our mind that for anything, there must be an opposite. good vs bad, up vs down, rich vs poor.. so one would assume that if there is something, then at some point, it was/could be nothing, given that something (existence) is the opposite of "nothing" (total absence).
The truth is in our every day life, yet we never see it because we already accept that what we know is good, and that we need to know, what we don't, when in fact the irony of it is that we might ask the wrong questions (think of... how fast can a cat fly?). And now, think of a world where all people would wonder all their life how fast can that cat fly, since they never saw it. They don't consider the obvious answer and fact that a cat's body is not made for flying, but they still want to know how fast it can fly on its own. This example can be perceived a bit retarded, but it has its point with what I'm constructing in here.
Tell your companion to look in a drawer and get you your car keys, assuming it's not there already. Most of the times, your companion will say that it is nothing in there. So even if he refers to the fact that your car keys are not in that location, he subconsciously agrees that 'nothing' is in that drawer. So by that, he gives life to a 'nothing', that is becoming an ultimate truth, because he wouldn't be looking 4 times in 1 minute at the same drawer in case the keys appeared and 'nothing' went away. The same way as the ultimate truth that we will eventually die, that an hour has 60 minutes, that if we drink water we won't be as thirsty.. and so on, the very same way "nothing" is created in our mind and is being considered as "something".
And when we look again at this question, why is something instead of 'something', we realize that we are making the wrong question (e.g. how fast can a cat fly).