I am So. Bored.
I’ve been ruminating for months, lost in my own mind, thinking about what to write about. I love to write, and for a while my mind has been an empty, mechanic vessel for thinking about nothing more than an assignment for a gen-ed I couldn’t care less about, or what ill-fitting black top and jeans that don’t fit my body right to wear on a Saturday when I didn’t even want to go out in the first place. I’ve been floating through space, angry with myself for not feeling like myself; it seems like a bit of paradox. I don’t even feel like my weekly sessions with my therapist are productive, I’ve felt unable to access the parts of my brain that can even delve deeper into why I feel anxious about conflict in close personal relationships (something about my parent’s divorce, blah blah). All that to say, I haven’t written, not for a while.
While I’ve been sitting in this hole for a while, so empty headed, all I can think about is my To-Do list, and I’m over this repetitive cycle of ennui. It wasn’t until five minutes ago, when I clicked out of the new Knives Out movie on my computer, a film that requires some form of attention to detail, to send a text message at the same time, I was done. It’s like my brain is so understimulated I can’t focus on one thing for more than five minutes at a time, like a child with a new toy, patiently waiting for the next. I’m sick of feeling like a sellout of the version of myself that is passionate, intelligent, deep.
I love to read. Not romance novels (not to put shame on smut, as I do indulge sometimes) but books that make me think about my greater purpose as a human. Books that make me feel like a tiny, small part of a universe floating around, insignificant in my own problems in perspective of others. I love to bake. My mom and I would always make blueberry pancakes every Sunday growing up. I developed a habit after that of making apple pies, brownies, cookies, basically anything you can put over a cup of sugar into. I haven’t baked in almost five years. I hate small talk. I despise it actually. I love conversations with people that make me understand that someone else is living an entire life I don’t know about. I want to talk about things I’m passionate about, what others are passionate about. Not how anxious or stressed I am, my daily schedule or my vague, dull plans over break.
But mostly, I love to write. I long to. Whether it’s the lyrical mental dance of phrases in my head I think of when my mind’s adrift, or my journal, writing for only myself, or whatever the 443 words (yes, I counted), above are. Nothing makes me feel more passionate than typing so fast that I’ve created enough spelling errors for the words to be illegible. It sounds silly when I put it on paper, but it’s the truth. The lack of writing hasn’t frustrated me, but my inability to. I lost the childlike whimsy comparable to twirling in circles in front of your parents as a kid and getting praise even though your dancing was horrible. I’ve been so focused on the potential of what I produce being awful that I’ve quit altogether. In doing so, I dug myself into a creative block that led me to feel dreadful anyway.
Anyways, I’m sick and tired of my antics. I want to read again, I want to bake and talk until I can’t anymore and write until my fingers hurt and be able to watch a movie without getting distracted. I desire to nourish my brain with the things I love the most. The love of writing is a metaphor for the whole thing, by the way.
Nina Southern