Due to Covid, we are (duh) spending a helluva lot more time at home.
Surprise! Many people tell me they are dying of boredom.
To put it bluntly, they are in a rut.
The Cambridge Dictionary
World-Weary
Someone who is world-weary is not enthusiastic about anything, often because they have had too much experience of a particular way of life.
Boredom is Dumb
What am I doing to pass the time? To keep intellectually stimulated, emotionally engaged and (more or less) awake?
Oh, and not bored.
A few examples:
Installing a wine window in my home office. Salut!
Experimenting with at-home mole removal. Ouch.
Teaching my pet duck to straighten up and fly right. What can I say, he has issues.
Tweaking that decadent rum cinnamon pecan caramel bun recipe. Practice makes perfect.
Woo hoo! Going craft crazy. Etsy beware! Don’t miss my elegant skeleton nipple jewelry and my one-of-a-kind pumpkin glitter art decoupage. Busy hands are happy hands.
Giving Fitbit a run (actually a walk) for its money. Come all, join the Fitbit cult of Stepford spouses. Ho hum Step, Ho Hum Step, Ho Hum Step. Zzzz Step. Zzzz Step. Zzzz…
Toilet training the cat. So what if he’s nine years old? It’s never too late to embrace baseless optimism.
Death certificate will read: Cause of death – Meetings!
“She was hanging in there pretty well, but then a meeting did her in.”
Moi
Sure, I look alert and interested in this HOA meeting.
I’ll bet my faux expression of keen attention is fooling the overbearing board members and those oddly perky neighbors sitting next to me.
If it weren’t for the rampant yawns, the tears streaming down my face, and the occasional uncontrolled giggling – they’d have not a clue that I’m bored silly.
Thoughts While Sitting at a Meeting
OMG I’d rather be antiquing in Provence… or even Poughkeepsie.
July is National Boredom Month, and so I celebrate boredom. Come on, cultivate your ennui.
And may the force be with you.
Arrrgh!
If you are feeling bored lately, here are 7 HELPFUL SUGGESTIONS to shake ya outta that weary funk:
1. READ A BOOK. WTF why not – How ’bout a clever book about boredom?
ANATOMY OF BOREDOM – Boredom: A Lively History by Peter Toohey (via BrainPickings!)
2. PLAY OLD SCHOOL SCRABBLE – or a “bored game” of your choice – ‘TIL YOUR EYES BLEED or ‘TIL NOBODY IN YOUR FAMILY IS SPEAKING TO YOU.
3. Catch up with the 21st century. Go electronic with Scrabble Flash.
4. DRINK, preferably with friends (FB friends don’t count) and when in a jolly mood. Wine away.
5. Join a club. Hmmm, here’s one!
6. TEACH THE CAT stupid tricks and embarrass him on Facebook. Most of the time, he doesn’t particularly like you anyway.
7. HIT the “celebrity news.” Reading about how bored senseless Paris Hilton and/orLindsay Lohan are – with all their money, glam, beauty, youth, personal assistants, movie star friends, toys, talents, trainers, and resources – will help you focus on your own blessings…
like “Thank God, I can’t afford a cocaine habit,” or “Good thing I don’t have to worry about totaling my Porsche Carrera 997 S,” or “Darn, I don’t have anything to wear to my court appearance today.”
You can’t avoid the envelope. It has that unmistakable crimson ink branded on jaundiced yet official looking “Penalty by Law” speckled government surplus paper! The kind of sad paper they use in prison bathrooms, inner city schools and Port-O-Sans.
Oh, joy! It’s your annual “Howdy Duty Time” greeting from the Superior Court of (insert any major city with a crime rate that exceeds its literacy rate.)
It reads: “Hi there chump! Here is your Summons for Jury Service. May your work schedule, social life and special travel plans be disrupted for the foreseeable future. Any slacker who blows this off, pretends to be dead or fakes a highly contagious disease will be fined $1500 (Penal Code FU-505.)”
“You may postpone your service for up to 90 days, but then we’ll really nail your ass on a long gruesome criminal case so why not just go ahead and eat the nasty frog? After all, jury ‘duty’ is a privilege, not a punishment, right?
They’ve got you licked, so you buck up like a good citizen, put your life on hold and head down to the courthouse on the assigned date.
There is an hour and a half commute in rush hour traffic, a nasty battle for a parking spot, a security process that resembles a cavity search, and an elevator ride where you are sandwiched between beefy guys with gang tattoos plastered across their subway- train-size heads.
The jury room (termed “the pool” – short for cesspool?) is located in the bowels of the courthouse and is depressingly reminiscent of detention hall in your recurring nightmare of high school hell.
The prospective jurors (“detainees”) are not happy campers. Most feel as if they have just been arrested themselves. Mournful sighs and expressions of “I never thought I’d miss my (insert job, kids, unemployment) so much” ripple through the bereaved bunch like a wave at a baseball game.
At some point (you’ve lost track of time) you’re sent to a courtroom hallway to wait – standing – for a few more hours with a group of 12 x 12 angry men and women.
In the “Voir Dire” (French for “say something Guano crazy and you get to go home”) the judge will ask if anyone has a significant reason not to serve on a trial. This is a highly entertaining opportunity to see just how creative (and desperate) your fellow detainees are – and how far they will go to be sprung from the joint.
A mousy woman peeps up, “I was arrested for an axe murder and it was a bad experience for me. I carry a buzz saw in my underpants. Wanna see?” (Bingo. Bye honey!)
“I hate all cops. They all lie. I wouldn’t believe any cop who told me anything, even if they just saved my twin babies from a burning car crash.” (Ding! You win the freezer. Adios, amigo!)
“I hate all (insert the race, gender, religion, political party of your choice.) The #!#@!#s are all #!#@!# crooks and should all be executed. Let me flip the #!#@!# switch.” (Don’t let the door hit your walker on the way out, granny!)
“I hit and run for a hobby. Helps me vent my road rage. Got a texting teen on the way her!” (Hmm, were you charged with that? If not, you can serve.)
And so it drags on, a tedious game of twenty dumb bunny questions in excruciatingly slow motion. There is a note taped to the jury box facing our seats. It says: “No gum chewing. No flip-flops. No alcoholic beverages allowed. DO NOT SLEEP!”
As hours and days drag by at a sadistic pace, you may bond inappropriately with total strangers who have been similarly randomly targeted. Affairs are not uncommon as there are more long bathroom and lunch breaks than any preschooler could imagine.
Call it Stockholm syndrome, but you may find yourself falling madly for the handsome judge who looks so sharp in those slimming black robes. Nobody apologizes incessantly for delays the way “Hugh” does.
Then, for no seemingly rational reason at all, it ends abruptly. You are excused. Free to go. Justice has been served. Ode to Joy! Never will you see mentally stable, cold sober folks act so ebullient in public. You’d think they just won fifty grand and a red Corvette on a game show. “Yippee! I’m free! Now I can make my root canal appointment!”
