I am #bored. I mean, maybe not right now at this very moment, but in general, I lose interest in things quite easily. I am, sometimes super pumped about a topic, a project, a person, and then, the curve of time versus my attention reaches a point of no return where it inevitably sinks down, flirting with the 100,0 point.
How many times have I stopped in the middle of something to entertain myself with my good ol’ friend Netflix? How many times have I urged hubby to finish a story which was taking, literally ages to end somewhere? How many times have I changed my mind on a specific project or job because it no longer fulfilled my desired enthusiasm level? How many times have I mindlessly scrolled down some addictive social media feeds while waiting for… anything? I saddened me to say that it is too many to actually keep count.
Being a housewife (but not desperate ha!) for more than four years now, I can openly say that, dude, I have been bored. A lot. I love spending time with myself and all (I am kind of an introvert, so, yay!), but sometimes, it has been just too much!
As I reflect on that aspect of my life, that I pretty much never really talked about...ever, it gets me thinking of boredom in this permanently, www, connected era, as no less than a phobia.
Yeah, I am pretty sure that the fear of being bored is actually real. (Thaasophobia HA! It’s a thing, I just researched it!)
Boredom is like suddenly, the emptiness of the present moment was so unbearable that we had to fill it with something. Anything. Even with some meaningless and quite frankly, often alienating activities. We have to fill the buzzing of our own thoughts with loud music. We have to occupy our lifeless thumbs with some useless games. We have to stop paying attention to our unsatisfying lives by peaking in others’. We absolutely have to have something to do or… or what?
Avoiding boredom with empty, unproductive stuff is fine when it’s controlled and not too intense, I think. But, you know that as much as I do, these mindless activities quickly become a norm, addictive. I think that, when we quickly shuts boredom up with senseless things, we just want to make time goes faster. And then, we wake up one day, and time flew so fast, it’s like we weren’t even there! This thought makes me cry a little bit and alarms me to a level so high that I feel the floor just disappearing beneath me…
What to do then, to avoid waking up one day and realizing that we spent most of our lives in front of a screen, watching bullshit stuff?
Well, when we start feeling bored, what if we didn’t react as fast as it takes to grab our smartphones, and sit with it for a minute? Could we, perhaps, close our eyes and breathe deeply and embrace the sensations that boredom is triggering for us? Maybe, then, we could use that boredom trigger to shift our attention to something more productive and meaningful to us than the thumb up and down dance on our smartphone. I think that next time I start feeling bored, I’ll try to, I don’t know, read my book, or go for a little walk. Maybe learning to live a few hours per day without a phone could be a good idea as well! I have an amazing and super wise Yoga teacher who was saying that the best ideas come naturally when our brain is not occupied somewhere. You know, how our creativity is at its peak when we’re showering? So, if we just let our brain alone for a moment and let it be… bored, the ideas might come by themselves!
Just a thought…
Who here is bored? Are you up to challenge yourself and embrace boredom to the fullest?
Hugs,
Andy L.
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