Better to be bored than troubled?

I’m halfway through a Hong Kong drama just now - On-Lie Game (as always, a play on words. This one is about online scams). If you can get past the Public Service Announcements about how to avoid being scammed, it’s pretty much a run-of-the-mill tangle of casework and the main characters’ personal lives. It’s nothing new - the same kind of melodrama and slow-burn while the leads muddle through a typically cryptic web of stories.

One line made me pause, however. A wife tells her husband working overseas that she’s had a bad day at work (she’s the boss). He tells her that she should just give up her job and be a kept women instead. She’s not impressed; she says she’d have no purpose in life and would get bored. His response? ‘Better to be bored than troubled.’

We’re all going through things like cabin fever, depression, separation turmoil and plain old worry right now due to various lockdown restrictions and regional various in government fuckery. Basically, we’re all troubled by something. Would boredom actually be a better alternative?

I’ve been struck by boredom recently. Since March I’ve been working from home, and it’s been easier for me than many others I work with. I’m not a people person; I’m quite happy to work in solitude, asking people for things I need when I need them, contacting others when necessary. I’m quite happy to sit at home and methodically plough through work without needing companionship, idle chat, or in fact people. We’re now well into September and it’s not the work that’s been getting me down recently - it’s the routine. Wake up at seven, go through a twenty-minute exercise routine, have a sit down for ten minutes to try to recover, then shower, have breakfast, and be online and logged into all systems for nine o’clock. Start an MS Teams video call with the (small) department. Work on everything that needs it until one in the afternoon. Break for dinner; cook something. Be back for half one. Work through till five. Say goodbye to everyone via the MS Teams video call. Log off and find some way to amuse myself until tomorrow morning.

Rinse and repeat.

It’s the routine that’s getting to me, not boredom as such. There’s no variation. Yes, I have a pretty much endless array of media to keep me entertained. Yes, I’m happy living by myself. Yes, I’m ok with calling out for anything I need over MS Teams or otherwise being on mute all day. But that’s all there is. I don’t leave the flat (apparently the latest is that we’re not allowed to mix with anyone of any other household right now), I don’t do anything except amuse myself on the sofa.

I’ve written another fanfic, and now I’m in that ‘post-production’ phase of reviewing plot holes and tweaking scenes. I’ve caught up on series and films on Netflix. I’ve cleaned the flat every two weeks. I’ve sorted the plumbing problem under the bath and even cleared up the whole ordering-of-wheelie-bins misunderstanding with the local council. I’ve sorted my new finance agreement with my current car, fixed the poor IR receiver on my blu ray player, patched the out-of-date wi-fi protocols on trusty Jarvis, my 2013 Mac Mini, and tried two different ways to seal my draughty windows. I’m running out of things to stop putting off and just fix.

So am I troubled or bored? Or am I troubled by being bored?

I’m pretty sure I’m not good at being bored. Too much spare time makes me almost anhedonic. I need to have more work than time to do it - kind of like how a cup of tea should always be slightly too hot to drink. Getting through so much work so quickly (due to not being in the office, and therefore not being distracted by the human need to produce small talk for no reason) means my workload appears lighter. It isn’t at all, it just gets done faster. This means I regularly have half an hour in the afternoon where I need to scratch around for something to do. Most people would love this, right? But I can’t deal with it. I need something to occupy me at all times.

This is why I’m mainlining HK dramas like they’re twenty times better than they are. I can’t get through a whole episode without subtitles, and yet I’m trying to only flick to the subtitles to work out the key words of the series. It’s at least a challenge, something to work at. I haven’t seen it before and I need to pay attention to the subtitles, so there’s no sighing and checking my phone every few minutes.

I guess that’s all any of us can do - try to keep occupied. But then, it’s not the ability to do that, it’s the will. That’s taking a sharp down-turn and I’m doing my best to ignore that it’s getting harder to stop questioning why I’m doing it and just do it. I can keep going. I can.

For now.

But hey, new TV shows start in October (as well as Supernatural returning for its final episodes ever - I am not looking forward to 19th November 2020 when the actual proper finale to the whole fifteen year saga airs). Winter is on its way, Hallowe’en is again getting near, and after that we have some religious thing I don’t celebrate but get public holidays for anyway, so it’s all good.

I guess all we can do is keep on keeping on.

Image by Pitsch from Pixabay