When I sat down to write this essay I realized that, confoundingly, anything can be boring — eras, moments, people, places, ideas, situations, times of day, attitudes, television shows — anything. So much so that it's as correct to say, "The last five minutes of class were really boring," as it is to say, "My entire high school career was nothing but a three year stretch of endless, tear-inducing, mind-numbing boredom"; Similarly, it's possible to be bored because you have too many repetitive chores (see: fileclerk), while it's just as possible to be bored because you have absolutely nothing to do (see: 14-year-old during summer vacation).
So, even though boredom is the easily described feeling of, "This excites me so little that I barely find it tolerable," it can take many shapes: on some occasions boredom is a frivolous self-indulgence, while other times it can be absolutely terrifying, and still other times it's a major annoyance. As such, in homage to this great hideous god, I'm presenting a series of thoughts, of minor mini-essays running down the page — some are contradictory, some reinforcing; some funny, some depressing; some fact, some fiction — but all are about boredom in its many forms.
At work, I sit at a computer that has a database with a list of names. Next to the computer is a pile of files. My job is to make sure the names on the files match the names on the database — no misspellings. I arrive at eight a.m. and do this until four-thirty p.m., receiving only two fifteen-minute breaks and a half hour for lunch.
I bring this up not to induce pity — there are 'lifers' at this job who have been doing this for decades without much complaint — but to mention that, considering how boring it is, it's not quite as bad as you'd think. Because, while it's boring, you have to do something at the job — something that's just barely engaging enough that the time passes.
In fact, in a larger sense, I've found that if one is bored — or feeling mildly ill, or dissatisfied generally — one of the best remedies is to choose a menial task (a boring task) that must be done (such as doing the dishes, writing several impersonal thank you notes, or vacuuming the carpet) and doing it. The repetition, the slowness, the physicality and carefulness of the task will take your mind off what you've been feeling and at the end of the task (if you devote yourself fully to it), you'll realize that you've done something — you've cleaned your bathroom (or written your thank you notes, or whatever) and it took forty-five minutes and now you feel much better.
I've always had little patience for people who say, in social situations, "I'm bored."
It's like they've just pulled a rope that drops a net on the whole scene, causing all of us involved to get entangled in their boredom and most likely realize we're bored too.
"Thanks, Mr. Killjoy," I want to say.
If you were so bored, why couldn't you have stood on your head, or spilled your drink on yourself, or told a joke? I think we would have all enjoyed that much more.
There are many literary works that catalogue or touch upon boredom, the magnum opus being Joseph Heller's Something Happened, a voluminous novel in which the protagonist, Bob Slocum, meticulously documents (for five-hundred pages) his boredom, frustration, and unhappiness — but he's not just bored, he's depressed and pathetic, has no self-confidence and is nearly hopeless and he represents a generation of middle-managers who wish for nothing more than the courage to hang themselves by their own neckties...
I think the number one reason people watch television is boredom. Television can be great — I like MNF as much as anyone else — but it certainly is a nice little excuse, too.
Like they say: "You're never alone if you have a television." "It fills up the room." "It makes me feel like I'm talking to someone."
Sometimes it's a badge of honor to be bored — a contest to see who's had it the worst: "I've worked a forty-hour-a-week job stuffing envelopes — quite literally." "Well, I spent an entire summer scraping paint off of walls — again, quite literally — but at this job, there were these paint thinner fumes that gave me such godawful headaches and there was no way to avoid them." "I once spent a summer watering plants in a mall and — keep in mind — these were the same plants, four times a day, over and over again, and I did this every weekday all summer long and this was an outdoor mall and it was that one really hot summer — over a hundred degrees for two weeks straight — and I was still out there doing it." And so forth...
Boredom can be a frightening topic — being bored is only a few steps from being deeply depressed. If you think about, if you're bored — if you're at home, not really having anything in especial to do, and you suddenly get that sinking feeling that you really wish you had something to do, it's as if you're about to slip into depression: you know full well you could go outside, do your taxes, sing, play video games, smoke, eat, or do jumping jacks, but none of them are good enough.
Boredom: "I willfully chose to let myself rot."
What is that but the seeds of depression?
Boredom can teach: I didn't go to camp as a kid, I didn't do much at all in the summer in terms of organized activities — there were some activities, of course, but I was not as busy as many of the other kids seemed to be.
As a result, there were many days where there was nothing but me and the day stretching before me — where I'd go outside and play in the backyard with my next-door-neighbor, Simon, who was a year older than me. For amusement we used to wrestle in the backyard or talk about Thundercats, play Connect Four or watch television.
Though, thinking on it, I guess I can't really say I was bored...
Another (more uplifting) literary mention of boredom: In Bill Waterson's Calvin and Hobbes, Calvin says to his mother "I'm bored," to which his mother, who's vacuuming (if I remember correctly), becomes exasperated, explaining to him all the things he could be doing. After she's done, Calvin says to her with a smile, "I was bragging," and then walks away, leaving her to finish vacuuming...
Sometimes, if you're sitting somewhere, bored, listening to some friends having a conversation, you might get lucky — someone might commit a social faux-paus.
Of course no one will say anything about it, but there's an awkward pause and the pause bothers everyone quite a bit: everyone's uncomfortable, not exactly sure how to proceed, how to pretend to ignore what just happened.
It's moments like these that you might burst into thick, exclusive laughter — you find the strained politeness too hilarious and, besides, you know that you're never bored when you're laughing.
The phrase, "I'm keeping busy" seems to have the hidden message: "Thank God I have plenty to do! — I'd go nuts if I didn't!"
Why is it the older we get, the more we understand that we can't have too much free time?
Is this healthy? Is this normal?
— Or are we afraid of ourselves, of being alone, of time: to see ourselves looking back at ourselves?
Alex Starace (alex@professoryeti.com) enjoys doing many things, including eating Brie.
