in praise of boredom

Living too much of an exciting life? Time to unlock your inner potential and get boring

Not everyone leads an exciting life. Then again, exciting lives are not for everyone. Not everyone goes to glitzy 'bashes' (that's what exciting people call parties), or winters in the South Sea (exciting people often take nouns and verbify them up to make them more exciting, too), or flies out to exotic locations for a 'shoot' (exciting people are always doing this kind of thing, I'm told. I'm not 100% sure why). And not everyone wants that kind of excitement. After all, what have exciting people got on a cup of tea and an episode of Downton Abbey? Nothing, that's what.

not even a little bit exciting

 It's easy to be exciting and host dinner parties and work on 'projects' and 'travel' (cough, holiday) and 'winter' and 'do' things all the time. That's what exciting people are always at, whether they're posh and living in a silvery space house, or urban and trendy and living in some 'warehouse' making sculptures. They're always 'doing' things. I say, sod doing, and start doing nothing. 

It takes a special kind of skill to live a boring life. There can be dark days. Dark nights. Dark times when you don't know if you can go on, and are tempted to end your Boring Life by hosting a luncheon and wearing a cocktail suit. Boringness can be difficult to stomach. It can be hard. It is hard. But it's not a choice, rather a calling. To live a boring life is a big ask. But it's a challenge I, as a purveyor of the Boring Life, am willing to rise to.

Tumbleweed: a frequent visitor to somewhere boring

Take a look at some of the signs that you, too, are eligible for the dull/boring life of the do-nothing.

1 Every time you go out you go to the same place, with the same people, drink the same crappy wine, say the same mildly diverting things and go home at the same time. Who needs variation when you can have the same thing every week?

2 You watch the same movies over and over again because of a reluctance to get 'involved' in a storyline that you're not familiar with. That's why I've seen the same five movies way more than five times.

3 You would go to your lectures every week... but staying on the couch is just too much of a Yes.

4 You want to read a book... but magazines are just easier.

5 You look at your cat and envy her easy, warm, and (may I say) boring life. The life of a cat. What's not to like?

This is living

6 You've only got 10 hours a week at college, and already you're fearing the day you'll have to actually do some real work. Shudder. 

7 You go to sleep and look forward to breakfast. I don't know why, but it always strikes me as a clear indication that you are cut out for less-than-exciting times in your life if you look forward to eating cornflakes.

And yes, I do all of the above. It takes a certain kind of verve (I like to call it 'excellence', myself) to be a boring lifestylist. So, go on, embrace your boring side, and bon bore!

And now for another Mildly Interesting Thing You Might Like:

This artist, Oliver Jeffers, writes kids' books but also draws great random pictures which you can see on his website here. Lots of them have the sea and rain and little cute people in them. Well worth a wander over to!

bored? well, obviously

Really, what is so interesting about weather? And what weird things are going on now?

I've decided that it's That Time Of Year again - that time of year when the sun shines like a big bowling ball and it's finally warm and picnicky and happy tree weather.
I don't know why I've decided this, because:

1. It is never warm in Ireland. Ever. In June it rains and in July there is usually one day when you can go without a jacket. Maybe.
2. It is winter here. In fact, yesterday was the 2-degree-cold Winter Solstice. It was dark by five.

this is meant to be the winter solstice.
Come on, it's kind of cool.

So, I'm not exactly sure where I was going with the whole Summer thing. Maybe because, strangely enough, it looks like summer outside. And if you wake up at eleven and walk down to the shops, you can wear sunglasses and a shirt and you really don't need a jacket.

And, because of this Winter/Summer weather (wummer? sinter?), weird stuff's been GOING ON.
(Well, it's got something to do with it)
Like this:

1. have started watching reality TV (people who are housewives and like, love it, darling, people who live on Shores, people who date footballers, people who don't date footballers, people who live on farms, people who don't live on farms...)

2. am so confused about the (cold/not cold) weather situation that I've been wearing a conglomeration of weird long-sleeved layers and grandfather jumpers and Christmas socks. Then I heard that this winter only lasts, like, a month. A month! What! What am I going to do with all the ribbed socks I've bought? Throw them away? Save them for real winter?

superfluous socks...
the worst kind of sock

3. I'm drinking Lemsip. In June. I'm drinking Lemsip in June. That is something that is just wrong.

4. I've started running. No, wait, I've started waking up and going I Think I'd Like A Run Today. I'm becoming one of those exercise people I hate.

Maybe it's time to read a self-help book or something. Maybe all this is just me with nothing to do. Or maybe I've actually crossed over into a parallel universe where the weather is weathery, the TV is real, and it looks like summer when, goddammit, it just isn't.

Bon Blog!

And here are some Things That Might Be A Little Bit Interesting:

this cutesy homemade indie mag from Australia called Frankie - there are far worse ways of spending your time than reading about Benedict Cumberbatch and people who draw for a living!

annnndd... because I have been watching so much Australian telly, and because I have realised that said Australian telly is brimmed-full with ads, I have become friendly with some of these ads, such as the ones for Kia (now I can say iPod Connectivity and Big Boot Space and Seats Eight Comfortably in a pretty authentic accent) and the one for South Australia which has this song from Into The Wild called Rise by Eddie Vedder in it. Check it out, it's like going out to the beach and, I don't know, drawing your name in the sand or something.

the return of the boring and somewhere new

New city, new season, new blog post! And it's been a long time, too.

Ok, this is a bit of a scandal. I haven't written in almost two months.

Shock.

Surely that's not how a blogger is meant to roll? A proper blogger is meant to update once a week with witty and/or brilliant observations about life and all its etceteras. A blogger isn't meant to let exams or other trivial pursuits get in the way of a good post. Right? Right. I am now a prime example of a Lazy Blogger.

So, after all this time, what have I got for you today? Mostly nothing, because I do live Somewhere Boring, as you will doubtless remember.

Hah. That's where we're both wrong. I may live somewhere boring for 80% of the year, but for the next two and a half months I am living in the sun-buttered and wholly magnificent city of Perth, Western Australia. I'm working. I'm typing on my new Apple Mac (shiny). And I'm not living up to my blog name because Perth may be quiet and it may be in its own blissful winter, but it is certainly not boring, this shimmering patch thousands of miles away from the crummy reserves of Ireland's east coast. Oh, yes. Australia is so far away from all that boring college nonsense.

where I live now... well, for the next 2 months

However. Before I lose the run of myself in these perpetually sunlit flatlands. I have to remind myself that I have a great, fire-like capacity for being bored. I can be bored almost anywhere. So while I am sitting here watching highlights of the French Open (it's on too late here, I can't deal with that) and skimming away on my new comp, I'm starting to realise that boredom could possibly creep in one of these days.

I am thousands of miles away from the original Boring Somewhere.

I am staring out a winter that averages at around 24 degrees centigrade. But at half three in the afternoon there's still not much on television, there's still much comfort food to be found in the fridge, and nothing can quite cover up the fact that I've finished the only book I brought with me (not such a great idea, in hindsight).

So, yes, boredom will knock at the door and be let in, inevitably. Must find ways to fight it off. Until then, don't despair, readers of the Boring blog. I'll still get bored, especially now that my exams are over, things that prove you can be both bored and bogged down all at the same time. Next post (I'm planning already!), seeing as this one was just a welcome-back update (you're welcome) will be All About Exams and their finicky ins and outs. It's summer, it's Australia, it's damn warm and jumper-cold at night. It's new, it's different, and it's still time to discuss examinations even though the clouds aren't quite filling the skies even in the misty fields of Ireland.

goodnight Dublin

Update over! Here's to not waiting another two months for another Boring blog post.

Here comes a list of ...

What I've Discovered About Winter Summers

1. Always have an electric blanket handy

2. It can be warm during the day AND cold at night! Who knew? Probably my old geography teacher, actually

3. iwastesomuchtime.com can be a real lifesaver for those cold winter nights when the only thing on TV is some tennis chap ranked 500 in the world

4. It gets dark at a quarter to six. Boo

5. ... Note to self, do not wear knitted jumper while sitting on electric blanket.


Bon Blog! No, really.

life, death, and adrienne

Death of a diamond cutter, RIP Rich

I haven't been writing for a while because things have been somewhat less boring recently. And what, dare you ask, could be diverting me? A holiday to New York? (close) A new shiny internship? (closer) That's right, it's Exam Season! And I've got twenty days to do something about a mound of Greek/Roman/art/Chaucer-related exams that are about to come my way. Oh, joy.

But then I realised that Adrienne Rich had died and nobody had told me. Not even the newspapers or the old reliable Yahoo news.

Nope.

On the 27th of March 2012 everybody had more important things to think about than the death of one very influential feminist (yeuk, says everyone, what a dirty word), and National Book Award-winning poet. And it's not as if she isn't known over here. Far from it. Richy is even on the Leaving Cert course - and once you're on exam papers, well, you've really made it. That's when Caesar knew he really made it: when he made it on to every single one of the past papers of the exam I am about to do. Do being an overstatement. Crawl through is more like what'll be happening.

GO AWAY Chaucer... this is why I can't blog when I'm doing
 exams. Smarmy-looking poets on horses always find a way
 to interrupt

Anyway. Despite making it onto the Irish exam papers and doing her thesis on Yeats, there wasn't a sign of any announcement anywhere near me. There might have been in other parts of the world, but here: zilch. I have just read that the New York Times put her obituary on their front page: on the 28th of March the front page here was likely to be something about the Government or the Premier League.

The only way I finally found out was when someone was writing about her as their hero, and managed to mention that the eighty-two-year-old poet had snuffed it in California only a fortnight ago. And yet every day I'm told about Victoria Beckham trying on her clothes and thinking they're for 'everywoman'. How is that news? HOW? Oh, well. I guess that's why people have blogs. So they can write about something other than Victoria Beckham's fashion line. And yet here I am, wasting my blog talking about her. Oh, well.

to blog or not to blog: the perils of decision making in an increasingly decision-orientated world

When starting a blog is more like starting an argument. With yourself.

This is the house I'm going to live in when I stop
procrastinating and  get a real job

Look what I found during my standard I'll-trawl-through-folders-on-my-laptop-and-see-what-hides-therein procrastination technique. This was written when I was about to start blogging. Not just thinking about blogging. Not just signing up to Blogger.com and chickening out before writing anything down. 


No. This time, blogging was about to happen, and it was about to happen to me. Well, that's what I thought. Here's how that Mind Conversation panned out. 


(I'll give you a hint: not very well.) 

I was ready. Boy, was I ready, armed with my cup of tea and my obligatory silver-foil covered biscuit. I had absolutely no messages on my phone. I had no pressing concerns to be concerned about. I had my cardi on. I even had A Place By The Sea on mute in the background. At that moment, you could have accused me of being pathetic. You could have accused me of being overly preoccupied with whether or not a foil-covered biscuit really was the way to go, when an equally tempting Mikado was peering out of the tin. But you could not have accused me of not being what I most certainly was- ready.

And? 


Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I sat in front of my laptop and I realised, not for the first time in my life, that I had nothing to say. 


I sat there for a while. I sat there for another while. And then I started to doubt my very existence. Could it be that I really have no thoughts on anything? Do I not care about something? Is there nothing that I have to say to the world? Nothing at all? 


Apparently not. I officially had no opinions to share with the rest of the world. My blank blog page confirmed it. I was not a blogger. I had no thoughts. I was a failure. 

But I wasn’t going to take that failure lying down. No, son. I decided instead that I would be a Specific Blogger. That is, I would be an expert in some kind of field. 


The only problem was, I wasn’t an expert in any field.  


What could I blog about? What did other people blog about? Other people blogged about fashion, I thought. They write about fashion. You know. Clothes. Glasses. Chanel. Fashion bloggers are cool. They have polaroid cameras and they take pictures of stuff. The last thing I took a photo of was a sign that said GORILLA CORROSION on it. I don’t know what GORILLA CORROSION is, but it was written on a van, and I thought it was funny. 

the purpose of mountains

I was bored, so I found this picture of a goat

After I went to Barcelona I came home with a cold and wrote a Really Bad story about a mountain. I wish I had put a bear in the story because then it might have been less bad. I spent the whole day thinking about mountains and weather and what winter is like in the mountains and what birds sound like there (conclusion: they sound the same) and what kind of mountains they have in America - when I was supposed to be doing some Greek - or possibly Roman- related essay thing. Sigh. Boredom leads to a whole new world where mountains are Interesting and Important and bears are simply an afterthought. In the land of boredom, mountains have colours and contours and stretch up to the white sky. That's if they're in Ireland. If they're in America, I figure that they've got houses on them with blue gardens. In Peru they're like orange roads through the desert.

I like them. They're more boring than volcanoes. Volcanoes are always causing havoc and strife and exploding all over the place. Mountains are like, yeah, I've got magma. But I'm old and tired and bored of erupting. I want to stay here and watch Midsomer Murders and possibly have a biscuit and maybe another and then I'll just lie here and sleep for a while.

That's mountains for you.