Boredom Management 101

After a stint of identical days, I contemplate the double-edged sword of feeling bored.

Photo by Niklas Hamann on Unsplash

‘Only boring people are bored,’ still stands as my mum’s most repeated parenting maxim. Now I have my own children constantly whingeing about their own tedium, I absolutely empathise with her broken record. But recently, I’ve recognised that it’s a message that echoes through my brain to this day, so much so that if I ever find myself bored, I can spiral into an existential panic.

This January was very slow. I know it was for everyone. My husband was away, so my days were very routine based with few distractions or stimulants outside of the home. I was on dry January, and I personally find sobriety descends to deathly dullness after about the three-week mark. Sure, the taste of a creamy glass of champagne is a pleasure to lament, but that’s not why I drink. It’s the craic, the sparkle and juzsh that comes part and parcel with the fizz that I miss. I know it’s one of the hurdles to a booze-free lifestyle and it’s where I always stumble. Ya girl just likes a slightly tipsy good time.

I recently wrote to you about finding the magic in the mundane and coming to a place of surrender and acceptance with my role in my own family dynamic. I stand by that and I do feel much more able to manage a lot of these issues than say a year ago. But we all know two things can be true at the same time. Speaking to a few of you here and on Instagram, the question that kept coming up was didn’t I get bored with it all? Didn’t I find the relentlessness of it all unbearable sometimes? The answer to this is clearly, obviously, yes. Yes, I do get bloody bored. Even when we give into something, and make some kind of peace, it doesn’t mean we suddenly fall in love with it—and I wasn’t made for the Stepford life. So yes, I often find it hard. Yet it isn’t the housework or parental wrangling that I find the worst of it at all. Instead it’s the monotony of same-y days that start to knock on the door of my mental health.