I'm Bored, help.
As of late, this has been a thought on my mind: I am bored. The follow up is less a logical, reasonable thought and more of a whole body reaction: THAT MEANS WE ARE DYING. In short, I struggle with boredom. By my estimation I have always struggled with boredom.
When I was home recently (a little country town many roads away from Melbourne) my father asked me to clean up my old room. Amid comic books, notes I couldn’t tell you why I kept, old toys, and way way too many old exam papers, I found an old copy of my monologue from Year 12 Drama. The monologue was from an adaptation of A Servant of Two Masters, an old Italian play. It had been adapted by my teacher’s late brother who was somewhat of an existentialist. In the piece Truffaldino, the servant who gets two masters, complains that his whole life is just spent waiting. He performs a lazzi (an old form of Italian theatre; sort of like a skit or comedic routine) about waiting. Reading the monologue I remembered all the poses and inflections I honed over months and months. It was an acrobatic spectacular (though I can’t do any flips and can barely do a roll so maybe that’s a touch hyperbolic). It was all about getting into what it felt like to spend your whole life waiting, that was Truffaldino’s curse: “Run Truffaldino, you must go to the pub. And what should I do when I get there oh Master? You shall stand there and wait!”
If you’d asked me, at the time, why I had chosen this monologue I would have pointed to the physicality. A chance to explore the space with my body. I always felt that I was at my best as a performer when I could physicalise things. But reading it back, nearly ten years later, I realise that I may not have chosen it just because it meant I could run around (though don’t get me wrong, that was a huge part of it). I chose it because it was something I related to. Something that was inside me. This burning frustration, an anger, at the downtime in life. Truffaldino’s monologue was a cry against boredom, against waiting. It was a call to action, that life is better when doing not waiting. Waiting feels like death. Boredom feels like death.
I should explain that the boredom feels like death line didn’t come from me, well, not originally. The feeling has certainly always been there but it was given shape and meaning, a label to wear proudly, when my psychiatrist said it. It was just after I got diagnosed with ADHD. I’d complained to him about feeling more bored since starting medication. ‘Is this how it’s supposed to be?’ I asked. And he replied, in kind, ‘Well, boredom feels like death. But you’re going to have to accept that life is, sometimes, REALLY boring’. Hah! How’s that for a slap of reality to the face?
My feeling and fear of boredom is exacerbated by my retail job. I like the job. I like the people. Sometimes there’s just not that much to do. Which leaves room for thinking. Too much thinking. Recently, when this started I decided to do something.
Several weeks ago I had been advised, by my mum’s friend, that your nervous system reacts to whatever you imagine. She asked me if I imagine things a lot. I told her yes, all the time, constantly, it barely ever stops. She said that there was nothing wrong with that, just so long as I remembered that I needed to imagine good things. It’s simple logic. A simple piece of advice: if you want to feel good, imagine good things. Feeling bad? Stop imaging bad things. Something about how she framed it filtered its way into my consciousness. It had the right weight to sink into my brain. For years I thought the answer to some of my neuroses was to slow down, think less. Sometimes that worked, sometimes it doesn’t. But this advice; to think in a different direction, felt unexplored.
So, I was moving stock from one end to the other of the store. I found myself trapped in a spiral that convinced me I would be bored forever. That anything and everything that has ever brought me joy would eventually fade into being boring (fun stuff, I know!). As I did my 50th walk from one end to the other I caught myself—some small window of presence opened by the repetition of the 2000s RNB playlist and walking—and thought ‘Well… it’ll certainly feel like that if I keep thinking that’.
CRASH!
Glass shattered in my brain. The spiral ended. It felt like jumping in a cold plunge. Suddenly, I knew I wouldn’t be bored forever. The thoughts didn’t stop racing but the direction changed, like I’d opened a previously closed road and they could all just fly down it now. I started thinking about all the exciting things I could do to not be bored later. I couldn’t stop what I was doing while I was working, the work had to be done, but I could not think about it lasting forever. I could think about the writing I was going to do about it later. Or all the ways I’ve ever entertained myself and given myself purpose. I have no idea if this will help again. But for the moment, it did.
I hate being bored. It feels like death. A concoction cooked up by my neurodivergent brain that means when I’m under stimulated I don’t just feel meh, I feel like I’m drowning. It is unpleasant and it explains why I bought a book everywhere with me as a child. After successfully resurfacing from my boredom spiral at work I wanted to know if I had always been bored as I thought or not. I phoned my mum and asked her. She said “Well, no. You were just always outside with a stick.” The irony of this does not escape me. Of course I wasn’t bored. I was doing something. Always. Running, jumping, reading, twirling a damn stick. Then my mum said something wise, as she often does. Parents know how to sneak these wise bits in between ironic statements or niceties. She said ‘Well, you’ll just have to find your stick’.
‘You’ll just have to find your stick’.
How very true mother.
If you are, like me, bored a lot or more-so terrified of being bored, then it may do you well to think of escape routes from boredom like the one I mentioned earlier. In that moment, in a badly lit retail environment, I found a stick to chase away the boredom. I was still bored, I wasn’t doing anything new, but I wasn’t scared anymore.
My drama teacher told us that she once told one of her children, when he was very little and complained about being bored, ‘Good, mummy wants you to be bored’. Her argument was that boredom forces us to create. It forced her sons to play the guitar. It forced me to write stories and play with sticks and read books. It may not be so bad after all to be bored… Maybe…. Sometimes...
