I’ve had conversations with countless people who are struggling with the same experience as I am. The term “boredom” is almost derogatory, that somehow myself or anybody else don’t exactly have the right to say this because there’s literally cures for it: Get out and do something! Sounds easy enough, but inexplicably complicated at the same time. I do get out and get something done, but somehow it still isn’t enough.
I’ve said in conversations with the people I’ve opened up to with regards to this dilemma, that it’s probably a “millennial problem.” They’ve been quick to deny this observation. Apparently, it’s not generational to experience this. I’m pretty sure our parents and grandparents probably went through the same thing. I’m hoping it’s a phase, not exactly basing on age but depending on a point in your life where it is normal to be at an ennui.
It is very challenging to overcome. To be honest, I still don’t have an answer that at this point, I’m about to start giving up on finding ways to get over it and just let it run its course. I know it will end eventually, and I will worry about another thing I’d be experiencing, at another stage in my life.
For the longest time, I think I’ve filled this void with travel and friends. But that gets expensive very quickly and although it gets your mind off of your lethargy, as soon as you’ve finished doing something or being somewhere, you’re just back to where you started.
I remember a phrase that my grandmother always used to describe me. It translates into: “your butt getting ignited if you stay still for way too long” She always wondered why I couldn’t just appreciate being at home, and why I always had to be somewhere. Honestly compared to my sisters’ adventures, I’d say I was pretty tame, but I did oftentimes feel restless if I stayed “still for way too long.” If I had a lot of free time, I had a lot of opportunities to overthink even the most trivial of things. This usually ends very emotionally.
At this moment, despite being very busy “juggling” my career, my friends, and my travels I still somehow have a lot of time to spare. Those little lulls are the bastards that are causing me to go down an emotional rabbit hole. I try my best to avoid said lulls, but on the days that it’s a little impossible, I’ve gone back to doing arts and crafts or writing. I’m not sure if it helps completely but, it’s something else instead of inactivity, and I’ll take that small step. I’m sure a lot of you can relate because as I’ve said, I’ve had the same exact conversation about this with a couple of different people. If you know a way to get out of this mindset, I would love to hear them.
I’m finally going on another trip next month so #FindGizel will resume shortly. See you again soon!!
xx Gizel
Find Gizel 
Sharing with you an excerpt about Boredom from the psychoanalyst Adam Phillips.
“As adults boredom returns us to the scene of inquiry, to the poverty of our curiosity, and the simple question, What does one want to do with one’s time? What is a brief malaise for the child becomes for the adult a kind of muted risk. After all, who can wait for nothing?
[…]
We can think of boredom as a defense against waiting, which is, at one remove, an acknowledgement of the possibility of desire… In boredom, we can also say, there are two assumptions, two impossible options: there is something I desire, and there is nothing I desire. But which of the two assumptions, or beliefs, is disavowed is always ambiguous, and this ambiguity accounts, I think, for the curious paralysis of boredom… In boredom there is the lure of a possible object of desire, and the lure of the escape from desire, of its meaninglessness.
[…]
Boredom, I think, protects the individual, makes tolerable for him the impossible experience of waiting for something without knowing what it could be. So that the paradox of the waiting that goes on in boredom is that the individual does not know what he was waiting for until he finds it, and that often he does not know that he is waiting… Clearly, we should speak not of boredom, but of boredoms, because the notion itself includes a multiplicity of moods and feelings that resist analysis; and this, we can say, is integral to the function of boredom as a kind of blank condensation of psychic life.”
https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/06/19/adam-phillips-boredom/ 🙂
Thank you!!!