Boredom: A plague upon us

[deanglen]

Well, isn't it?



dean

 

[scotrace]

.

My fourth grade teacher used to say "Only the boring are bored." But she was an old bat with whiskers.

 

[Caledonia]

I quite like being bored. Mooch around the house and garden sighing a lot and kicking stones is quite fun. It gets even better if you're bored at work because it's like a mini holiday - bored, so don't work. The key to being bored is to find something fun to do while being bored. Like flicking through your vintage clothing collection wondering what essentials still need to be got. Staring out at the horizon contemplating the total meaninglessness of life. Watching that leaf so you can see it detach from the branch and fall, then missing it by a millisecond. Cleaning the gutters. Well you're never going to do it otherwise are you. The problems that boredom creates in society, all that meaningless vandalism, sloth and state dependancy, violence, it's lack of imagination. Boredom is the springboard to a fulfilled state of interesting inactivity. We just don't get brought up right!

 

[LizzieMaine]

I don't mind being bored, because I can only be bored when I'm not stressed out over something -- to me, boredom is actually a sort of mental tranquility that's all too rare...

 

[deanglen]

Boredom is the springboard to a fulfilled state of interesting inactivity. We just don't get brought up right!

Interesting point, Caledonia. Feel free to expound on it.


dean

 

[Nashoba]

I'm not very good at being bored. I'm almost always doing something and I'm usually multi-tasking. It's a daily life hold over from being a police dispatcher. I've gotten to the point where if I'm not multi-tasking something isn't quite right. I have a really hard time just sitting....I'll grab some needlework, or a basket I havn't quite finished or my knitting....I'm figity, it's a bad habit I can't break. If I do feel boredom coming on I usually end up here...that fixes that quite quickly....of course I usually have 4 screens up at once...
Nash

 

[Caledonia]

I'm expounding, I'm expounding! Point in fact. Right now I am so hugely bored I could just lie down and sleep if I wasn't here. I have three reports to write between now and tomorrow morning, and I've been doing this for so long that I could actually do it in my sleep. So why not get on with it. Because I'm bored! Starting point. Boredom. Any minute now, once I've finished expounding obviously, I'm going to decide to go mooch around the house (it's a tad cold out today, although that hasn't stopped me staring into the pond for 20 minutes looking for the great diving beetles that are supposed to be in there, but which I have never seen - oddly enough this led me to google the lifecycle of the great diving beetle to find out whether they might have mated then flown away. For anybody that's interested, because the pond is brand new, there was no vegetation for them to lay their eggs in - so they have flown away. Now I know and will have to wait for next year!). While I mooch I will be prompted to recall the song Minnie the Moocher. This will inevitably lead me to dancing around the house trying to emulate the style of the time. I like to dance and to emulate so while I will be ever so bored I will be forced to admit that I'm quite enjoying myself. Getting the way the boredom boat is drifting? I will dance my way into the living room, which is only partly decorated. It needs plastering at the southern end. Way too boring! But, oh look, while contemplating getting out the plastering tools, I spy the piano. And while practising is really boring, it's better than plastering, and I'm here now, so what the heck. This could go on, and I'm sure I'll be asked to be a tad more philosophical, but I'll take up far too much thread space. So I'll break here for now, but will be back once I've dealt with the really boring reports, which I can get on with now because I've been so bored.

And if anybody can work that lot out.....

 

[Quigley Brown]

When I get bored at work I just start playing with my Photoshop. I do some of my best work while bored...

Just did this one last week.

 

[herringbonekid]

Boredom is the springboard to a fulfilled state of interesting inactivity.

i'm with Cal's 'springbored' (sic) theory: as a painter i need lots of time with nothing to do so i can wait around for the ideas to come. you can't force those ideas. they need time to emerge.

 

[Hemingway Jones]

.

An active mind should never be bored. If I am bored, it's because I am in a mood and I need to eat something! There is always something to work at, something to read, old friends to catch up with, or something to contemplate.

 

[Twitch]

When I was bored, such as the many doctor appointments I used to take my Mom to and sitting in the waiting rooms, I always got internal. When I have time on my hands such as the waiting scenerio I look within to actually think. Yep. As crazy as it sounds I can entertain myself by mentally kicking around theories on paleoanthopology, mysteries of the ancient Earth, combat aircraft and such. I never read year old magazines in waiting rooms. Got too many other interesting theories of logic and deduction to mentally wrestle with.[huh]

 

[Caledonia]

Exactly - Interesting inactivity! I can sense a Nobel prize coming on.

 

[Barry]

A former manager once said...

I once had a manager who had more energy than anyone I've ever known. This guy kept moving and working and hustling he never seemed to stop until the end of the day. He worked long hours but never neglected his family.

One night after work we were out smoking cigars and he asked me how things were that day. I said I was somewhat bored during part of the workday. He looked at me and said:

If there is time to lean there is time to clean!

I think he picked that up from one of his managers when he worked at a restaurant. I always try to remember that whenever I'm bored at work or elsewhere. To me there is always something to do. I just try to keep moving.

Barry

 

[scotrace]

I read an interview with Morgan Freeman. He said (paraphrasing)

If there's work to be done, I'm all over it. But I'm not the kind of man to look for busy work when the work is done. If there's no work to be done, I'm all for sitting down and taking it easy.

Maybe the inability to just sit quietly and watch the grass green up, "feeling your toes," as we say at my house, means you just can't bear to be alone with your conscience for a spell.

 

[Elaina]

I'm crazy. Therefore boredom is not a state of mind I have.

Now in truth, I am crazy. But I always have 3 or 10 things going on in my own head that boredom doesn't set in. Even when I should be bored, i.e. a doctor's office, I can close my eyes and read one of the 7 books I've got trapped/memorized up there and read. I carry paper and a pencil everywhere so I can design, very rarely am I with out a book, and most times I have some black or redwork I'm doing near me or in a bag.

I can't sit still, and I usually have something to occupy my mind or hands.

Elaina

 

[drafttek]

I don't think I've ever uttered the phrase "I'm bored" in my life. I don't think I've ever been bored. Locked into an inescapably boring situation, there is always something with which to keep occupied. Rewatch that movie from the night before on the internal cinema, review the best way to perform a Hammerhead, or proper crosswind correction. I can sit for hours showing no sign of activity, as on an airliner. My wife will ask what I'm thinking about. "Nothing" is my usual reply, and often is the truth.

Even as a child I was never bored. I didn't have to have "toys" to play with. The most mundane everyday items are toys. Give me a pile of loose change and we suddenly have a raging tank battle. Boredom is the product of an underactive imagination. Notice I said underactive. Imagination is like a muscle. It needs to be excercised, stretched, challenged. Put ten average adults in a room with a pile of Legos and see what you get. Alot of cubes and things their creators can't even explain. Do the same with ten year olds and you get the most amazing creations, indecipherable to adults, but which the kids can explain in great detail. The difference is the child's imagination has yet to atrophy.

 

[Rosie]

"I'm bored". My students utter these words all of the time, about time spent outside of the classroom of course. I'm hardly ever bored. I have lots of things to do. Sewing projects, baking, grading papers, talking on the phone, shopping, putting outfits together, reading, drawing, entertaining, painting, dating, sewing. This summer, one of the first times in a long time that I didn't work, was absolutely fantastic. There was never a shortage of things to do or places to go or people to be with. If it weren't for this pesky job, my life would be wonderful.

 

[Marc Chevalier]

When I was a junior high school student, school could be very boring. How many times did I look out the window and want to enjoy the great outdoors?

.

 

[Irena]

I'm never bored, thanks to an over-active imagination and being easily entertained. I've had hot chocolate packets become acrobats (much to the amusment of my little cousins)and pencils dance happily after finishing a test (one of my friends started giggling...I'm guessing she's seen Benny and Joon, too). While taking the milk out of the fridge, the milk waves a tearful goodbye to the celery and orange juice, and what a happy return!

The only times I can remember being bored, I was under the influence of heavy painkillers and my brain was too numb to move. Oh, and we've never had a television in our house.

 

[Story]

Working on an "idle hands are the Devil's workshop" sermon, Dean?