Something About Boredom

Boredom.

People say it often…and a lot on Twitter, surprisingly.

“I’m BORED”…

What does it mean to be bored?

Merriam Webster says being bored is “the state of being weary and restless through lack of interest”…Wikipedia says “Boredom is an emotional state experienced when an individual is without any activity or is not interested in their surroundings.”

Boredom, is a word first recorded in a text by Charles Dickens, (Bleak House – 1852) and used to describe something “tiresome or dull" since 1768.

Our Grandmother (The Father’s Mother) used to tell us all the time that there is no reason for boredom. She made it clear to us that boredom was something people with no imagination experienced, probably at the age of 8 or 9 we knew better than to express “boredom” in front of Grandma!

But we were hardly ever bored as children anyway; there were books, paper and pens. Just those alone were enough to sustain us for hours and days. We just wanted to be left alone with books and paper.

So why do people get bored? Why do some of you get bored?

According to the guy who writes for Dragos Roua (http://www.dragosroua.com) “boredom is a state of anxiety and low self-respect.” He’s got some interesting things to say about people and why they get bored; instead of repeating it here we’ll just give you the link: http://www.dragosroua.com/how-and-why-we-get-bored/. You can figure out if he knows what he’s talking about at all.

This isn’t a super inspiring blog post, we know. Despite the fact we are many (which makes boredom easy to avoid)…when we are not many (because sometimes it’s just one of us)…we still don’t understand boredom, so we wanted to field the question: How/why do people get bored?!

In a world with book, movies, music, video games, cultural activities, internet (and EVERYTHING that entails), gyms, computers (non-internet attached and all that THAT entails), cable television…not to mention…imagination, paper, pens, craft supplies, art supplies…it’s endless…how are people fucking bored.

Sometimes we get anxious, all of us individually, and it’s not from boredom, it’s from the sheer amount of stuff we can/could/want to be doing!

There are no limits…how can anyone be bored with no limits?!

~Frank et al

Didn't like this post? Want more to read because you're bored? Yesterday's post gave an example of one of the ways we entertain ourselves, plus at the bottom some links to our best/more interesting writing on this blog. Check it our here: http://just-call-me-frank.blogspot.com/2011/11/show-and-tell.html