Desperately Seeking Boredom

When I started this blog I thought I'd be able to write enough to fill pages and pages. I'm finding that writing daily is a daunting task. Bummer. I'm also finding that my life is pretty boring and for that I'm grateful.

I've worked hard to make my life boring.

I quit drinking booze; when I stopped drinking, I stopped getting arrested. Funny how that worked, huh? Divorced a man who drank heavily; he was very exciting. Except he never got arrested. He peed in some interesting places, though. Dresser drawers, kitchen sink, floorboards of his truck... very interesting.

Shortly after I quit drinking I resolved to be less dramatic. Alcoholics Anonymous showed me that being 'dramatic' was a way to get attention; getting attention is a way to manipulate people. AA prefers that you not manipulate people. They call it "managing and controlling", and they can show you how silly it is to try to manage anything but yourself.

So when I felt that swelling of righteous anger I asked myself "What is my goal here?" If I were honest with myself and the goal was merely to inflate my ego with false indignation then I needed to let go of that. After practicing at letting go of the righteous anger I could feel the dishonesty of it. I became a lot pickier about what required anger as a solution.

My kids are grown and gone from home. There's an end to a whole lot of fun stuff.

I'm amazed at how teens perceive adults as having freedom. We all know that's crap.
Yea, verily, adults are free to freeze their asses off if they don't pay the light bill. Adults are free to sleep under bridges if they don't pay the rent or mortgage payments. Adults are free to starve if they don't earn wages to buy food. Adults are free to walk if they don't own a car.
So yes, if you perceive that as freedom, by all means pursue it.

Then of course, there's the kid who scares the crap out of you by pursuing the freedom of not working. Rent an apartment, have a baby, marry a loser; do anything but work. Hang out with people who are getting disability or food stamps or other guv'mint handouts. Don't look at the cage that those people are in. It's tiny, trust me. Don't listen to your parents when they tell you that getting disability is not a lifetime achievement.

Hey, I let her live. About six months ago she discovered her latent work ethic. She's still married to the loser, but one thing at a time, eh?

I no longer own a business. That had it's share of boredom, but the burden of anxiety was huge. It's a relief to work for someone else and let them make the decisions for their business. There were parts of owning a retail business that I enjoyed very much but those were out-weighed by the churning fear of not succeeding. Thinking about it now is enough to make my stomach knot up.

Simplifying your life is popular these days. I guess that's what I've done, albeit unwittingly. Really, I was searching desperately for boredom.