Boredom is waiting

Boredom is waiting.

Little boredoms: Waiting in line, waiting in traffic, waiting for a frappuccino at Starbucks. Little boredoms don’t bother me – I have lots of patience. It comes from an inflated sense of superiority. I can’t expect too much of the people around me, so I just have to be kind and wait for them to do their jobs at their own speed.

Big boredoms: Waiting for my life to start.

Boredom is time, wasted.

The time wasted by little boredoms doesn’t bother me either. It isn’t my fault I have to stand in this line. Nobody can expect me do anything else at this moment, (I can’t expect myself to do anything else) so I am free to daydream. I can let my mind wander, flitting around the space, landing on heads, imaging good or evil thoughts, silly choices, bizarre desires, devastating decisions. The waiting will end, probably sooner than I’d like, and I’ll have to go back to doing something.

But time wasted waiting for my life to start is just a waste. There is no excuse. Whatever it is, the thing I’m meant to do that hasn’t started yet, the thing I am waiting for, all the time between now and when that starts is wasted.

It is now and it is always and everywhere. I’m forever searching for the signs that the something I’m meant to be/do has finally been found.

For this, I am not waiting patiently.

I’m mashing the buttons on the keyboard, I’m spamming the mouse button, trying to make the damn thing load faster. I’m spinning as fast as I can, trying to make a spark. I start new projects, read new books, think new thoughts, play, walk, move, look, listen. I never stop trying. I make my own luck. I am everywhere and every-when so as to be in the right place at the right time. I’m in it so I can win it. I shoot for the stars. I push and push and push and push myself to do, to be, to act, to Make. Something. Happen.

I’m exhausted.

Everything aches.

I can’t control the panic any longer and suddenly I can’t leave the house for the fear of doing it wrong.

STOP!

Take a deep breath, take a hundred. Open my eyes…I find myself not-waiting. I am sitting still. This is so odd.

I am here, now, thinking about here, now, not some yet to be moment that may never happen. I listen to a song I love while staring out the window at the birds perched in the vines that climb the wall across the alley. My brain slows down; this is what calm feels like. I sip my coffee and nestle deep into my comfy chair unaccompanied by the familiar, frantic worry of all the things I’m failing to do right now.

Boredom is time wasted waiting for something to start instead of living in the moment just begun.

Maybe my life began a long, long time ago but I was just too bored to notice.