Bored again
What would I do without a blog? What a fabulous way to look like I'm busy and all the while I'm ranting about completely immaterial issues. Anyone walking by my desk will hear me busily tippy tapping on the keyboard, and assume I'm creating a brilliant report on something relevant.
I decided last week I would compose a profound rant on our Sad Obsession with Consumerism but then I realized I really needed a new closet since my previous one fell off the wall (don't ask) and off I toddled to spend vastly on new closets. Then I decided I would rant about How Megalo-maniac Big Box Empires are Robbing the Innocent Consumer, however I realized almost immediately (okay it took a day or so) that I was actively supporting the Big Box Empire and couldn't really knock it without looking hypocritical - but then again, what's wrong with a little hypocrisy? A person can realize something is wrong even while they are caught in the system, I think. Awareness precedes activism. And some people take a while to screw up enough courage to activate. So to speak. Some people never do, and become perpetual complainers. Maybe that's what I'm all about. Anyway, I've moved on to much more compelling ranting: Boredom, it's Presence and Why It Exists.
I think people get bored because they're too dull to think of something amusing to do. Look at moi, for example, I get bored, I feel inexpressibly dull, and then just out of sheer orneriness, decide to start a blog (with a little prodding from L, that maven of pop culture and newfangled fads). Now I'm not bored anymore, and though I may still be dull, I like to think I'm struggling against the quagmire.
How about kids? I must have been bored silly as a kid at least some of the time, but I don't think I actually ever called it that or whined about it. Even if I had, my mom would have looked at me like I'd been possessed by aliens or something - what's to be bored? Get a book. Go outside. yadda yadda. Anyway I usually would go outside and look for four-leaf clovers or something. Yes, I did actually look for them and even found a few. Or, I'd hop on my bike and go help myself to an apple from the nearest orchard. Made the mistake of telling my Dad that once, and couldn't understand why he was so horrified - the place was PACKED with apples, what's one here or there? He called it "stealing". I somehow missed the morality bus as a kid.
Nowadays I don't think kids do anything by themselves, except watch TV, which is apparently not boring to them. I can't think of anything more annoying and boring than watching TV. Luckily, I don't have one. Before everyone points and gapes at the 32 inch monster in my basement, let me hasten to add, it doesn't work for anything except DVDs. Which are nominally less boring and can even approach amusing if they have enough chase scenes, martial arts (hee hee I wrote "marital arts" ) and dead bodies. ... where was I?
Oh yes, the boredom thing. I think boredom has a direct correlation with attention span - have you watched an older movie recently? I tried to watch the "seven year itch" a la ms. monroe, and nearly invented a new universe out of boredom. Everything took SO LONG to do, say, happen, or describe. Even the scenes were too long. No one in their right mind would take that long to say something in this day and age, people would just wander off looking for something less boring. Which is a really long way of saying, our attention spans have shortened exponentially. Which brings me to ADHD, but let's just sidestep that little rant.
So the theory is: faster lifestyle = shorter attention span = more predilection for boredom. Would changing the equation ie slowing down help any? CAN we slow down? or will the world just zip right by and we'll be like those women who wear the same hairstyle they've had for the past forty years, sadly out of date but blissfully uncaring? Perhaps we'd even stop being bored...
I decided last week I would compose a profound rant on our Sad Obsession with Consumerism but then I realized I really needed a new closet since my previous one fell off the wall (don't ask) and off I toddled to spend vastly on new closets. Then I decided I would rant about How Megalo-maniac Big Box Empires are Robbing the Innocent Consumer, however I realized almost immediately (okay it took a day or so) that I was actively supporting the Big Box Empire and couldn't really knock it without looking hypocritical - but then again, what's wrong with a little hypocrisy? A person can realize something is wrong even while they are caught in the system, I think. Awareness precedes activism. And some people take a while to screw up enough courage to activate. So to speak. Some people never do, and become perpetual complainers. Maybe that's what I'm all about. Anyway, I've moved on to much more compelling ranting: Boredom, it's Presence and Why It Exists.
I think people get bored because they're too dull to think of something amusing to do. Look at moi, for example, I get bored, I feel inexpressibly dull, and then just out of sheer orneriness, decide to start a blog (with a little prodding from L, that maven of pop culture and newfangled fads). Now I'm not bored anymore, and though I may still be dull, I like to think I'm struggling against the quagmire.
How about kids? I must have been bored silly as a kid at least some of the time, but I don't think I actually ever called it that or whined about it. Even if I had, my mom would have looked at me like I'd been possessed by aliens or something - what's to be bored? Get a book. Go outside. yadda yadda. Anyway I usually would go outside and look for four-leaf clovers or something. Yes, I did actually look for them and even found a few. Or, I'd hop on my bike and go help myself to an apple from the nearest orchard. Made the mistake of telling my Dad that once, and couldn't understand why he was so horrified - the place was PACKED with apples, what's one here or there? He called it "stealing". I somehow missed the morality bus as a kid.
Nowadays I don't think kids do anything by themselves, except watch TV, which is apparently not boring to them. I can't think of anything more annoying and boring than watching TV. Luckily, I don't have one. Before everyone points and gapes at the 32 inch monster in my basement, let me hasten to add, it doesn't work for anything except DVDs. Which are nominally less boring and can even approach amusing if they have enough chase scenes, martial arts (hee hee I wrote "marital arts" ) and dead bodies. ... where was I?
Oh yes, the boredom thing. I think boredom has a direct correlation with attention span - have you watched an older movie recently? I tried to watch the "seven year itch" a la ms. monroe, and nearly invented a new universe out of boredom. Everything took SO LONG to do, say, happen, or describe. Even the scenes were too long. No one in their right mind would take that long to say something in this day and age, people would just wander off looking for something less boring. Which is a really long way of saying, our attention spans have shortened exponentially. Which brings me to ADHD, but let's just sidestep that little rant.
So the theory is: faster lifestyle = shorter attention span = more predilection for boredom. Would changing the equation ie slowing down help any? CAN we slow down? or will the world just zip right by and we'll be like those women who wear the same hairstyle they've had for the past forty years, sadly out of date but blissfully uncaring? Perhaps we'd even stop being bored...
posted by zouzou at 3:07 p.m.
3 Comments:
This is where we differ, thee and me. I don't understand how people can be bored in this day and age. There is so much to do, so much to learn, so much to, yes sadly, watch on television.
I need a LOT of downtime - but I never seem to be bored. Beyond the fact that I am great company (especially to myself - make myself laugh out loud daily, honest) if I have some time, I go looking for something of interest on the Internet. Yesterday it was how did turkeys get their names, and did it have any relation to the country Turkey (it does, but in a weird historical way). I don't know how that question came to me, it just did. My brain just works that way.
It's the wonderful concept of childlike curiosity that we all need to cultivate, especially as we age. Like looking for 4-leaf clovers - I did that too - and what's more, now that you've reminded of it, I want to do it again.
So before this becomes a blog in itself (going in that direction) let me just end by saying - call me next time you're bored - I've got a whole list of stuff I still want to know, experience, defile ...
I think I'm with Bast on this one... except that I don't go hunting for 4-leaf clovers. Besides, if I get bored, I tend to eat myself into oblivion... NOT good!
Which reminds me... when was the last time I ate, anyway?....
I only get bored at work, particularly the mind-numbing, don't have enough to do kind of work that I seem to be saddled with these days. (Hence the blog at all) If I didn't have to work I don't think I'd ever be bored...
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