Weeknotes - How does one be bored?

How does one be successfully bored?

Well, I suppose that’s not the real question. The real question is, how do I successfully sit with nothing to do and not feel like I’m wasting time or missing out on something? Even now, instead of sitting and being, I’m choosing to spend a Sunday afternoon ruminating on why I can’t happily do nothing. In the last hour I’ve bounced between looking at my work week, playing some video games, watching some videos, and scrolling my phone. I haven’t been able to focus on any of these tasks properly because my brain is so loud and noisy at the moment.

I think that’s the crux of it, too. I don’t want to be bored – I want to be able to sit in silence and either solely focus on something enriching but pointless, or even just sit with my thoughts. Instead, it’s a constant whirlwind of things I should be doing but I’m not, potential avenues for something that’s a mental focus right now, or (my favourite) replaying something that I’m not happy with in my head from any time in the past twenty years and internally workshopping how I did it wrong and what I could’ve done.

I went through a period in my life when I practiced mindfulness, and I think it really helped. However, over the past five years, I’ve downloaded and deleted Headspace about 5 times and have yet to build any good mindfulness habits. Instead, I feel like my life has been a constant ‘build the car as it’s hurtling down the freeway’ mode, jumping from one side project to another.

So that’s my task at the moment. Start trying to be more quiet. More settled.

Creating more space in my brain.

But in the meantime, I’m going to go back to mentally chasing squirrels.

Currently listening to: Will by Love Rarely
Currently reading: We Love You Bunny by Mona Awad
Currently thinking about: How I can convince all my favourite bands to come play Indiefjord