As I sit here and attempt to conjure up some random shit to do I am actively trying to negate my feelings of boredom. As I fall into the daily routine of doing the same things day in, day out, I see my life pass me by with little meaning. I don’t want to be one of those people who wake up 50 years from now and realise that I haven’t done any of the things that I wanted to do. For the most part, people tell me I am crazy. I like to call it ‘actively participating in life’. In fact, every New Years I create a yearly ‘bucket list’ instead of New Year’s resolutions. I work my way through checking the things off the list and it gives me mini goals and something to do.
The weirdest thing about being an active participant in life is that when you aren’t doing something new and different, everything else just seems bland. It is one of the appeals of the road and travel to me and another reason why I struggle so much with staying in one place. Of late, the monotony of routine is really bothering me. Same food, same work at school, same bus, same gym, same same, but different. And yet I have been go karting, dressed as Santa and gone on a park crawl at Santacon, taken bus tours to scenic parts of England and taken a few walking tours. But none of it seems to be filling the gaping hole of boredom I feel right now.
I feel like a lot of this has to do with lacking new and open people in my life. The hardest thing about living in a new city and working very long hours is that you rarely get to meet new people. You barely get to know the people you do meet because people working day in and day out, they don’t really offer much of themselves. I find myself sitting here feeling like I don’t have much to offer them either. I find myself feeling boring to the vast majority of people I interact with and maybe that is my fault because I spend so much time trying to hide behind the mask of accepted ‘normality’ and I don’t know how to behave. I find that often that I am met with judgement instead of support for many of the random things that I choose to do. “Why go get drunk in the street dressed as Santa? Why go learn to fly a helicopter? Why go on a Jack the Ripper Walking tour?” While I sit here and ask ‘why not?’ I find that I spend a lot of my time hiding what I may consider some of the best parts of me from people. I find it isolating. I find it tiring. And more so I wonder why I do it and why I feel that I have to to be accepted in general society. My answer at the end of the day is always to move.
As I sit here after just booking my flight to go home and visit my friends and family, maybe the answer it to go back to those that have known me the longest. Those that are used to my antics and have learned to love me for them and not despite them. Those that will even join in when my brain starts getting bored and crazy. But even then I feel torn with not being understood at times. Maybe the solution is to start letting more people in? And yet that would involve investing time to do so, which I don’t have very much here. All I know is this.
Boredom will kill me. It will make me a shell of a human and take away the fundamental parts of me. So I won’t have it. I will continue to try and grow and change and try new things.
As for being boring? I really don’t know. That is in the eye of the beholder. I had a guy in a bar once tell me I was the most boring person he’d ever met. I told him that if I was that boring he could fuck off and go away. But then I also didn’t really engage. I was in a headspace where I couldn’t be bothered, just like I am feeling right now. Too tired to let people in.
So maybe what I need to consider is this.  Who it is that I seem to feel comfortable allowing to behold who I am? And maybe I need to think about revealing more of myself without fear of judgement and persecution, which is a hard thing considering I get told frequently not to scare new people I meet. It plays on some of the largest insecurities I have of myself. Maybe it is time to try and put some of those insecurities to bed and move forward. But then again, maybe it is time to move to somewhere I can feel more accepted for being who it is that I am. If you have any idea of where that is, let me know…. I am all ears.
Thomas Takes On.... 