On Bored

Episode #612

October 24, 2020

There are nine trillion bits of information on my computer, yet i find myself in the same small loop every morning.

i wake up and walk downstairs, pour a cup of coffee and walk to my office.
Check email and deal with new messages. Some email gets replies, some get filed, some have links that i pursue and others (most) are deleted.
Open Safari and click to Google news. Scan the headlines. Read some of the articles. Repeat until bored.
Play some dumb game until bored.
Write the text for my next bLog.

Repeat, repeat, repeat… until bored.

Luckily a troubled client might call or text.
i jump on their computer and solve their problem.
Almost never boring.

At some point in the morning i exercise with my wife, shower and dress.
Never bored when i am with my wife.

Breakfast is repetitively familiar, but somehow not boring. Hunger is a great attention getter.

Projects around the ranch are always interesting. i am not bored when working with my hands, mind and body. There is always a beginning where i prepare, a middle where the work is done and an end where i pick up and revel in the results.

Our evening walk is about an hour. Even though the walk is always a loop around the neighborhood, boredom is averted with mixing up our route and great conversation.

At night, after dinner, the TV takes over my life. Binging television series and watching movies always gets me asking “What’s next?”

Even new and interesting TV can be boring, so my wife and i play “board” games, puzzles and cards.

There are things on the computer that break the cycle of boredom.
Zoom with friends is always nice… and interesting.
Creating digital projects, like my parachuting Santa ornament, challenges my computer graphic skills.

Shopping challenges my searching skills and typically results in a visit from Fred, the UPS guy. Fred always has a story for me. His visits are never boring.

My morning boredom creates an impetus to turn off the computer and do something new. 

Everything on the computer is a loop. The operating system and every application loops around many times per second, scanning for my input and hoping to respond to my actions.

This cyclical nature of the computer is a feature that drives me into the real world. The computer might be the perfect assistant, but that unrelenting devotion can also bore.

The computer points out the challenging interest of getting out and improvising with my life.

i hope you are “on-bored” with me when i say that a reliable anti-boredom tool available to us all is to shut down the computer.