Being Bored

What to do? What to do?

I used to be pretty good at just sort of sitting around listlessly staring at things, poking at other things, maybe posing existential questions about that thing. Sometimes, as I’d sit there, the TV would be on and it would create this pleasant droning hum in the background. I wouldn’t really be conscious of what was on: it was just a soundtrack to my boredom. Generally it would be some cooking or travelling show. I’d hear the spit of cooking oil and planes and all-round merry making, and I’d sit there pleasantly numb, occasionally checking into see if it was worth pottering out of my boredom to pay attention for a second. It rarely was.

Recently, however, I’ve found this state to be really intolerable.  I’ve become this peculiar bundle of energy that completely defies the gentle, panther-like elegance of my usual movement, or lack thereof (one can be gracefully still). Where my mind used to be this pleasantly blank slate in these moments, with the occasional thought wafting carefree across its surface like the very existence just passing me by, it is now perpetually agitated. 

'Let's do something,' it says, knowing full-well that most of what it wants to do is impossible and that the rest is mundane channel flicking.

So to try and tame this beast of boredom, I’ll attempt to distract it with random thoughts about what I can rant about next: feed it with some mindless activity (hence how A Ranting Distraction came into being). By focusing on the stranger corners of my discursive intellect, I can quite often uncover some unlikely path-of-thought that’ll take me to a realization, often unfounded, which I feel oddly compelled to share.

I think this sense of being ‘compelled’ is part of the process ultimately: if I’m bored and being weird in my boredom, well, you can all be subject to the ambiguities of whatever has happened to catch my attention at that moment. Consider it something like projection.

That is, if you actually bother to read this. Does anyone really read this?

If it isn’t already obvious, it seems that in this case even the depths of my usually active and fibbing imagination seem to be bored. 'Let's do something' has morphed into, 'fine, don't do something.' Thus, all it is offering up is boredom as a topic and, frankly, that’s pretty boring. It’s a universal feeling and no one wants to have my boredom projected onto him or her if they have to cope with their own. But, um, here you go. Enjoy. Trust me, mine is no more enthralling than yours. My boredom, that is. Don't get innuendo-e on me.

I wonder how I get to this state. Indeed, how can anyone get bored? There’s generally something to do that can at least provide a momentary distraction:

• Read a book.
• Go for a walk.
• Straighten up the house.
• Pick a fight with a stranger. Points if the stranger is old.
• Drugs.
• A foray to the store on a unicycle while listening to Korn.
• Mow the lawn naked.
• Chant scripture naked.
• Mow the lawn and chant scripture fully clothed. Or naked.

It’s just, I guess, that when it really gets a grip, all these potential activities in themselves become boring and tedious: a moment away to only come straight back after. For instance, I’ve been fidgeting on the couch for the last two hours evading writing this: partly because I couldn’t be bothered; partly because I couldn’t think of anything to write (I mused for a solid 45 minutes, in a bored distracted manner, about confusing Tina Arena and Tina Turner and their smash hit, “Simply the Best,” needless to say, it came to nothing—even I couldn’t quite make that work); and partly because I’d convinced myself it’d be a boring exercise and I’d quit halfway through.

Yet, this is more than halfway, so I’m winning at this point. Hurray for me. And hurray for you for sticking around.

…

I'll go think up something to do with, I dunno. Maybe something about the confused symbolic importance of crabs: home owners or renters?; gentle crustacean or scrotal itch?; beach cleaner or astrological cancer?; curious sideway walking oddity or eater of baby turtles? 

Obviously, that's going nowhere. Crabs are boring.

Neh, I’m bored of this. 

Here’s Tina Arena singing my anthem: what I play to myself when I need some pure and uplifting reassurance, and Tina Turner's "Sorrento Moon" just won't cut it.