Boredom

I think I've long since forgotten what boredom feels like. I literally cannot remember the last time I had the feeling of "Man, there's nothing to do...", like I always used to whine to my parents about when I was little. It's something I simply can't relate to anymore. That's not to say that I don't lose interest in things. I definitely do, all the time. But for quite a while now, the sheer number of things that I want to do has greatly exceeded the number of things I actually have time to do... I suppose one could complain about this scenario ("Wah, I don't have nearly enough time to do the things I want!"), but when I think about how, a handful of years ago, I had so little inclination to do much of anything at all, despite my vague-but-varied interests... I'm really glad that these days I have genuine interest in so many things—the kind of interest I'm compelled to act on... that actually makes me want to *do* things.

It seems to me that boredom cannot be cured by anyone other than the bored person themselves. If I am bored, and I find someone else to entertain me for some time, won't I just be bored again as soon as they leave? (If the answer is no, what might it be that I will feel like doing at that later time, that I didn't feel like doing before?) I suppose I'm talking about chronic boredom, as opposed to, say, having forgotten the book you meant to bring on your 9-hour flight. I was a little surprised by the Wikipedia definition of boredom as "an emotional state experienced ... when individuals are uninterested in the opportunities surrounding them", which is actually quite an apt description of past-me: there were usually plenty of things I could think of to do, but I simply didn't feel like doing any of them. Perhaps some combination of affect- and attitude-related factors gave rise to this general disinterest in doing things... I don't know.

When there are severe constraints imposed on your activities, like when you're on the bus or waiting for a tardy friend to arrive at a meeting spot, then sure, it's a somewhat different story: that immediate situation isn't particularly rife with opportunities. But when I think about it, in general, it kind of blows my mind how many things a single person could take it upon themselves to just get up and do at any given moment.

The issue of how one goes from being generally bored to never being bored is a perplexing one for me. I don't know how it happened in my case... maybe partly finding things that I really cared about (or just greatly enjoyed) doing and was strongly compelled to spend time on, and partly being inspired by certain people to spend my time actually doing these things. That's not to say that I don't also spend a lot of time doing other things though, which I guess sort of relates to my second thought...

I've noticed that my wanting to do stuff, which is great and all, has actually been affecting my social life in an odd way: unless people want to do the same things I'm usually itching to do, I find I'm increasingly reluctant to make plans with people these days. Even people I really enjoy spending time (and actually want to spend more time) with, which is what makes this really unfortunate and kind of frustrating. I recently happened to grab coffee with a friend after something we'd met up to do wrapped up quite a bit early, and it was really nice. But at the same time, when planning ahead, I don't think I would've suggested getting coffee afterwards (even if I'd known our task wouldn't take long) because there are other things than sitting around drinking coffee (i.e., basically doing nothing) that are much higher on the list of Things I Want to Spend My Time Doing.

I guess what it comes down to is that the activity itself has become much more salient to me than the potential social interactions that would take place during it... which perhaps makes sense, since a planned activity, like hiking or playing a game with someone, or even drinking coffee, is relatively predictable and easy to imagine in concrete terms, whereas social interactions arise spontaneously depending on so many different factors, and it's hard to imagine beforehand what the experience of a social situation will be like. Which basically amounts to it being very difficult for a vague unknown to seem more appealing than a desirable known. So regardless of how often I would indeed be quite happy to sit around and do nothing but chat with people when the opportunity arises (and I definitely tend to get down when I don't do much of anything social for a while), I have a hard time planning such opportunities into my week. And since I'm logistically pretty far-removed from my social world, they don't really arise unless I plan them. I don't know what to do about this, or even if I want to do anything about this, but it seems like a problem.