Blogocentric Formulations

Bored is Boring

Prompt for Day 2639: Bored? “I’m never bored anywhere; being bored is an insult to oneself.” — Jules Renard. Do you feel bored sometimes? What bores you?


Like anyone else, boredom is a thing that happens to me occasionally. Sometimes there are moments when I'm not particularly motived to do anything and find myself succumbing to boredom, but not all that often. As long as I have certain amenities — internet, someone to have a conversation with, something to read, etc. — I can keep myself occupied for long stretches of time. There are almost always several projects that I'm fiddling around with, things that I want to research or learn about, and random activities or interests that I'm eager to look into. There literally are not enough hours in the day to do all the things I want to do, so I don't often find myself bored when I have time to kill; that's just time I can be using to check off one of the many things on my to-do list!

The things that do bore me are situations where I'm not particularly engaged or interested in what's going on, but can't (or shouldn't) pass the time by focusing on other interests. I often find myself bored at social functions, in meetings, during school events, etc., especially if those things are slow-moving. The bane of my existence is corporate nonsense like town halls or training modules. A lot of that stuff is just so predictable and goes so slow I find myself easily prone to boredom in those situations. It's one of the reasons why I actually really like remote work; it's so much easier to pass the time and keep myself engaged in other interests when I can have a corporate all-hands Zoom meeting up on one screen, and a couple of websites up on another.