boredboredboredboredbored

When I was a kid, summer seemed to stretch out forever.  This was before cell phones and for a while, even before cable TV.  Boredom was a real thing.  I remember going to bed at night because I had to but not being tired one bit.  Laying there, too bored to sleep, too underutilized to feel the slightest sense of exhaustion.  Toss, turn, flip, flop while my mind ran around in circles and my sense of discontent with my bed, my room, myself grew and grew.  Eventually falling asleep to wake up and start a similar day again.

I was reminded of this feeling yesterday as I just, for whatever reason, kept circling back to lay on my bed. I wasn’t tired but didn’t know what to do with me and this sense of extreme boredom I had cultivated.  In between languishing on my bed, I did take three walks and super cleaned my bedroom, but there is just so much time in the day.  So much time alone, or nearly alone as my teenagers sleep until noon or later, and I am left talking to the dog, or cats.  They are adorable, but not great conversationalists.

My mother mentioned I must have read one hundred books by now.  I have only read one chapter and set that book down and walked away.  Other than Tiger King, I haven’t watched an entire series of anything.  I graded two essays but seem to be saving the rest.  I thought about writing.  I thought about cleaning the rest of the house.  I have thought about a lot.  I have thought about too many things. So much thinking going on up there.

I guess it is because we are all just waiting. Waiting to see if we are safe enough, waiting to see if we are distant enough, waiting to see if the world gets to start back up.  Will we go back to school?  I realize as time goes on that we probably will not, but I don’t like to think about that.  I don’t like to think about not seeing those kids at least a little bit more.  They made me so crazy before Spring Break that I was counting how many more classes left until Spring Break, but now I miss them.  I miss the interaction and the laughter and the challenge.  I miss their smiles.  I’ve gone from having 182 kids down to 2 and I guess that makes me feel a bit listless.

And honestly?  I feel like I am doing a really bad job with the 2 at home.  We are on totally separate schedules; they sleep until noon or 1 and I wonder if I should wake them?  Then I think why?  They come down and eat and disappear again.  There have been moments of joy and anger and shared boredom, but I feel like we are all more our own islands on a shared archipelago than being on an island of isolation together.  I’m pretty sure there is no “How to Parent During a Pandemic” but I still feel like I am not doing it right.

I am not wallowing in a sea of misery; I see the good in the world and in my life and I am floating on that in my sea of discontent.  I am Rose on the door as the Titanic sinks and Jack slowly freezes and slips away for sure.  But I am bored.  I am so bored. I am insanely bored.  And I feel bad saying that I am bored.  Perhaps my unwillingness to admit boredom comes from my mother’s threats of “Don’t tell me you’re bored, I can find something for you to do” during those long summer days as a kid. That woman could find a heinous chore in two seconds flat. 

That is what I need!  I need a heinous chore.  Something terrible like cleaning grout with a toothbrush, or washing garbage cans, and baseboards!  Yes!  Scrubbing baseboards free of grime and pet hair.  Yes, someone please assign me a heinous chore!  Then I can do exactly what I did during those summers: I will pretend I didn’t hear and go lay on my bed and stare at the ceiling and know that being bored was much better than whatever I was asked to do.