Boredom

"Boredom: The state of feeling disinterested in ones surroundings, having nothing to do, or feeling that life is dull"
~ ~ one definition of boredom

"...in a universe full of wonders [humans] have managed to invent boredom"
~ ~ DEATH in Terry Pratchett's "Hogfather"

I've heard it throughout my life: "I'm bored" or "That's boring". It's usually phrased as a complaint, and by implication, a demand that the complainer be entertained in some fashion. I never really understood boredom.

Oh, I know what the word means, and I can conjure up in my imagination what a bored person might feel like. I just don't ever feel it.

When I was a child we would occasionally take car trips out of the city. Sitting in car for several hours with my siblings could have been a supremely boring situation. Keep in mind that this was the sixties: no iPhones to entertain us, the Walkman hadn't been invented yet, and even if my parents shared musical tastes with us, there was only the AM car radio. Despite this possibly boring scenario I was quite happy to look out the window and observe the scenery. And I wasn't at all bored by it. To this day I watch the scenery when taking trips, even though I also have an iPod with my whole music collection plugged into the car's sound system! A game that I frequently play is turning the green highway signs with town names into the names of people. One of my favorites is the sign in Iowa that indicates the towns of Colfax and Mingo are at the next exit, I imagine that Colfax Mingo was jazz musician who died tragically of a heroin overdose.

When at home, I'd often take out the Encyclopedia and pick a random subject to read up on. Or just go out and take a walk around the neighborhood.

Now not succumbing to boredom doesn't mean that I don't sometimes get restless and wish I was doing something else. This doesn't come so much from dissatisfaction with what is going on now, but from the long list of things that I want to accomplish, work on, or participate in that I haven't been able to fit in. My mind is constantly churning out ideas for blog posts, or photo shoots. There are subjects that I want to read up on and learn more about; I have a collection of drums that I want to spend some time playing; I have a small business that, although small, requires attention, including marketing; there's new music that I want to catch up on, as well as more bands playing locally that I have the time or finances to go see. Plus I have that thing that was not around in my youth - the internet, if I ever feel the need to be entertained.

Sometimes I feel that life is too short to fit in everything that I want to do...I'll never be bored.