Bored or Boring?

In the space of a week, I’ve had three separate people tell me they were bored with nothing to do. This begs the question, are you bored or boring? 

I find the phrases “I’m bored” and “there’s nothing to do” to be annoying and irritating.  They stick in my craw for some reason.  This time, they got to me so deeply, I had to write about them.

I simply don’t understand this.  How can anyone be bored?

I can understand being lonely, being broke, being indecisive, being overwhelmed with possibilities, being lazy, being slow, being preoccupied, so on and so forth, but bored?  Nah! I just don’t get it.

There is so much to do!   You can:

• Read a good book (or even a bad book if you like).
  
• Take a walk down the street, to a park, around a mall. (In Boston, you can take a walk around the harbor or the Charles River.)
  
• Listen to music quietly or sing along with your favorite song.
  
• You can people watch at the mall, in Harvard Square or Davis Square, at Ashmont Station or South Station, in Coolidge Corner to name but a very few places.
  
• Fix a delicious meal and eat it or even a PB&J and enjoy it.
  
• Go out somewhere and enjoy a spot of tea, a mug of coffee, dessert, or a full-fledged dinner if you can afford it.
  
• Watch movies – on cable if you’ve got it, at the movie theatre or even borrow DVDs from the library where they’re free.
  
• Watch Law & Order reruns – they are on virtually all the time on some channel or the other.
  
• Call old friends and catch up.
  
• Paint your toenails red.
  
• Get your hair done, maybe try a new style or color.
  
• Dance – by yourself at home with the music turned up loud or out at a club.
  
• Make a holiday shopping list (real or fantasy).
  
• Plan your Thanksgiving dinner.
  
• Clean your house, organize those files you’ve been meaning to do.
  
• Find a volunteer opportunity and help someone else.
  
• Peruse your clothes and come up with new outfits to wear.
  
• Purge your closet and get a bag or two to donate to a worthy cause (or sell stuff through a consignment shop or on Craig’s List).
  
• Take a workshop/class/seminar.
  
• Write that novel that you know you have inside you. (Every November there’s National Novel Writing Month  – join thousands of other people who pledge to write a novel in a month.)
  
• Take piano lessons (or flute or drums or singing).
  
• Join a choir or affinity group (find them on Meetup, etc.)
  
• Make a blanket for the Welcome Baby baskets that are give out by Dorchester Cares.
  
• Play games – Scrabble, volley ball, backgammon, chess, Uno, whatever.
  
• Embrace solitude.
  
• Meditate or pray.

For goodness sakes, pick something and just do it.  There are a universe of possibilities waiting for you. 

Boring is an attitude, a state of mind, a condition you choose.  Unfortunately, many people embrace boredom, finding nothing to their liking, being judgmental even though the only taste they have is in their mouths and even their palates aren’t developed!

Perhaps you’re the problem.  Perhaps you’re boring. Perhaps you lack imagination.  Perhaps you’re waiting for life to bring something to your door.  Life doesn’t work that way.  You have to be out and about in life for “it” (whatever “it” is) to happen to you.

So please, stop with the boring and if you are bored – don’t tell me.

(After thought: Sometimes boring is a blessing because it means there’s no drama going on in your life.   I wrote an earlier post about it: Bor-ing, Bles-sing.)