Thu 28 Jun 2007
Getting Dull
Posted by Erin under Daily Life
[6] Comments
Been sick for about a week. At the beginning, there were two really knock-down, glassy-eyed, fuzzy-brained days. Since then, I weave between sort-of-better and more-of-the-same, sneaking to the empty office at work for catnaps during the long days and working from home for most of today, (even though my phone voice is something to be reckoned with– deep and scratchy) Being mildly to moderately ill is one of the most boring states there is, I’ve decided. All the things I feel like doing bore me before I even begin to do them. Take food. I lay there on the couch and think of the various yummy meals I could concoct: chicken and lentils in marsala sauce over rice; greek-style potato salad with pine nuts and feta; tossed salad with chipotle-glazed chicken on top. Then I think about the energy it would take to concoct them, and how unappreciative I would be of my efforts. Then I toast an english muffin. Toasting english muffins is only marginally less boring than thinking about toasting english muffins.
Now I’m entertaining myself by thinking about what would be more boring. I could be sick with only Avon catalogs in the house to read. Or, I could be in a multi-day meeting with no AC, where people keep making longer and longer speeches about nothing and everyone stays just so they can get the treats at the end. I could be in charge of manually changing all the lowercase x’s on a giant spreadsheet into uppercase x’s. I could be stuck in a training where the only activity for hours and hours is filling in the blanks. I could be a security guard at an office building where I had to sit up straight at a kiosk and wear a tie and make sure each person was “badging in” correctly. I could be in charge of a colicky new baby that only sleeps fifteen minutes at a time. That would cause more despair than boredom, though. See, when you start to reach the extremes of boredom, it just turns to despair or anger. True boredom needs to be pale and innocuous to qualify.
And yes, I’m going to the doctor in the morning, and no, I don’t believe myself to be contagious, though that may have little bearing on reality…
Oh, Erin! I’m sorry to hear it.
Yeah, I think the most boring job I ever had was sitting at a coliseum non-entrance door, and making sure no one attempted to enter it. I started picking at the hairs of my neck just to do SOMETHING. After awhile, a supervisor came by and asked if I had hickeys. Whoops. Yep, my neck looked pretty suspicious, all right.
Data entry’s right up there, though, for mind-numbing boredom.
I hope you feel much better very soon!
what about the one person reception desk at a health club during the early morning shift? All you do is sit there as groggy and grumpy people sign the sheet on the desk and walk past without even acknowledging your existence… then you get to stare at muted news channels for hours on end and smell the sweat. Mmmmmmm.
Wait, what about the nature film photographers who spend 193 hours sitting in a small blind waiting for a bird of paradise to put up his feathers? With a bad eighties song from England about a bird of paradise going around in your head for days on end? I guess we’re moving in on despair there…
Ryan, as a birder, I can attest that your nature photographer example would not be boring. There’s an unnatural sense of bird anticipation that comes over the birder, making what *appears* to everyone else to be boring, not. Sounds lame, but truly, there are few things I’d rather be doing than out in nature for hours on end with a pair of binoculars, my camera, and my Sibley guide. However, I’d rather be sitting on a stump by a creek than in a blind, but that’s more from claustrophobia-avoidance than boredom-avoidance.
Erin ~ I’m so sorry you’re sick!!! I noticed that Dr. G appeared to be Erin-less on Sunday, but the couple of times I saw him, I was hurrying past for one reason or another, and never did ask him where you were. Now I feel badly about that.
Add me to the crowd of well-wishers–hope you are feeling better soon. Been reading your blog by downloading it when we can connect and reading at leisure, so I haven’t been able to comment in a manner proportional to my my enjoyment.
kate– interesting that boredom leads to self-destructive behavior
Ryan– good ones!
Karen– I know that ryan has the excruciating tedium on the authority of the naturalists themselves, from the DVD extras on planet earth… maybe if it’s your job to film things, and you dont’get to pick what they are, it’s not as fun.
Tara–Thanks.