Boredom

Since I seem to have turned into a trend of self reflection, I thought I would share another little tidbit -

I don't really get bored anymore.  Not even when doing things that are 'boring', like sitting through a lecture I'm disinterested in.   About the only time I do is when the regional manager is in our office, because then I can't pull out my kindle, or my knitting, and have to watch what I do on the computer.  It's not that I don't have work to do, but at the time he is in the office... I don't have work to do.  My work mostly happens post 5 PM.

Other than that though... boredom just doesn't happen.  Even when I'm basically just lying in my room doing nothing... there isn't boredom there.  It's more of just a state of restfulness.  I don't feel a need to be in constant motion (or so it feels.).  Beside this - I have more than enough to occupy my mind that the boredness that plagued me through middle and high school... it's gone.  I do too much.  I knit, crochet, program, write, and especially worldbuild.

It almost feels like I've grown up a bit.

Almost.

I'm not going to delude myself by thinking I am superbly mature.

Perhaps I am just lucky that most of my hobbies are things I can do unobtrusively and nearly anywhere.  I think it's mostly though that I've finally figured out that thing about constant motion.  It's okay to rest.  It's okay to not be turned on all of the time.  It's okay to want peace and quiet, or just to listen to the sound of the rain for a while.

There is value in action, but necessity also in inaction.  It partially makes me want to get away from home for a week, alone, and just do nothing... or just do whatever my whims take me to do.  Likely that would be sleep a lot - at least initially.  Perhaps walk a lot to help me sleep a lot.  I don't really know.

But it just feels weird, not knowing that boredom I knew for so long... and I don't know when it left, either.  A lot of changes are like that - you don't notice them happening until BOOM.  You've changed.

This, at least, I think is a good one.

A response to a friend, Re: Screwedness

If you know me moderately well, you know one thing about me.

I handle worry poorly.

Unfortunately, this seems to go hand in hand with a propensity toward anxiety and viewing the worst case scenario.  I have done better with this the past year than I have before, but still it gnaws at the back of my mind.  People use many examples for themselves, for what goes on, and in my case, worry is a river.  Sometimes it surges, sometimes it just erodes, and all attempts to dam it off seem to fail, only bringing a bigger torrent when I allow myself to feel it. 

More and more, I allow myself to feel the worry, accept it, and move on.  Or at least, that is what I attempt to do.  See the above statement about handling worry poorly.

More often, what happens is I start visualizing worst case scenarios, pushing myself into quite a mental state, including being in tears, before I realize how silly I’m being and calm down.  I used to plague friends with what-ifs.  I try hard to leave the worries I put on them to things that are actually happening, now.  This is both harder and easier.  It’s harder because I push things down sometimes until a bursting point.  It’s easier because sometimes when I start talking about it, I start spilling my worst cases on other people, which just makes me dwell on them more.  That’s not a good situation for anyone.

On the other hand… Well, what got me on the topic of this in the first place is something a good friend of mine wrote – “You’re seldom as screwed as you think”.  With my penchant for making up worst case scenarios, well, is it any wonder this phrase struck a cord?

Yeah, my transmission is mostly dead, but it will last going to and from work until I can put down a down payment on a car, as well as get my own insurance.  The longer trips I’ve planned have been postponed, but so long as I can budget for it, renting a car to take those trips isn’t too bad, pricewise. (I think a couple of my friends would shoot me, including the ones I’m visiting, if I tried to drive to Brooklyn or North Jersey with my current car. Also, the new car fund at least won’t get raided into for tuition immediately, as my next semester is paid off.  Okay, I can handle that.

Okay, my grandmother broke two vertebrae- but she also has been in the hospital which has been taking good care of her (… for the most part.  I’ve got some complaints there, especially involving her insurance but I am trying to maintain a relatively pleasant tone here.), she’s had the surgery she needs to glue the bones back together, and now is doing rehab to get her strength back.  Besides which, I’ve visited her when I can and seen for myself that she is in good spirits.

And okay, so my aunt has tripped over her cat, can barely walk, can’t seem to stop shaking, and is basically incoherent right now.  On the other hand, she is also in the hospital and being taken care of, though I don’t yet know what’s going on, and can’t really visit her as she is in Delaware and well see earlier point about the car.  But again – she’s in the hospital, and hopefully I’ll find out what’s going on soon.  It’s equal odds I won’t though, as mom and dad like to withhold information so I won’t worry (which… only makes me worry more because then I just start imagining things. I have explained this but that is a whole separate situation).

That’s the thing about worry, I think, for me.  I handle it poorly, mainly just trying to sleep it away because sleeping is not thinking about it.  It also messes up my appetite something terrible – not that I comfort eat (nothing wrong with that by the way), but that I eat less than I do on a normal basis, and well my eating habits, in terms of amount I eat, is not the best anyway.  I attempt to not send myself into fits of tears with it but fail more often than not.  But on the other hand, I’ve also learned how to turn the nervous energy to something productive – usually knitting, crochet, or writing.  This past week and a half (for all of the events I’ve mentioned have happened in that time period), there’s been a lot of playing Diablo 3 and learning more of the game’s lore, which kind of works well as I seem to have acquired a muse of that universe. 

I guess my point is this… Sometimes the most innocuous phrase can trigger a lot of things and well.. I really rarely am actually as screwed as I think I am – once I calm down, anyway.  Now I just have to learn to send off the panic a bit sooner.