premeditated blatherings

I wrote this a while ago. It's been collecting dust... maybe from June? May? Early July? A few weeks ago? No bloody idea.

Tonight: Been writing other things on my balcony for hours by the glow of my laptop while drinking Malbec out of the world's cheapest wine glass (*white wine glass, because je suis idiote), so I figured I'd save blathery stream of consciousness writing and just post this old stream of consciousness that never saw the light of day.

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Drunk on meeting people…

always the anxiety of not meeting the right person, or meeting someone and being anxious and wondering if they’re the right person. Because even if you’re supposed to just know and feel that they’re 'right'… does this still apply to people like me who have profoundly overactive imaginations? I’ve had an overactive imagination since I was a fetus. Am I living a delusional life because of this? Do I really have everything that I want within my grasp, and I’m just making myself frustrated because of my own stubborn personality traits? Or am I a passionate person whose frustration is a symptom of the fact that I haven’t found what I need yet (or perhaps passion is the thing that makes you constantly a-flutter, constantly frustrated and chaotic and questioning. This is my fear. That this IS the life of passion and wanting more… is that you do actually want more from your mind, your habits, your inner self. All the damn time. It’s exhausting, but to be honest, that’s where I get most of my ideas and momentum)

I was dating someone about two years ago who put it to me in terms that I almost could not tolerate. We met up at the Dark Horse for a beer… oh, it lives up to its name…a seedy, dark college bar with kind of a creepy nuance and sticky tables. It was February, and the parking lot was an oasis of sludge and black ice. I could barely sit still, I was so worked up about something… practically knawing on the side of the table. We tried to remedy my conundrum. “Explain it to me,” he said, “I’ll help you put a name to your problem”. So I listed my symptoms: agitated, flighty at work and with relationships, want something in my life very deeply that I couldn't put a name to. Unsure of whether or not to stay or to fly… lacking a certain meaning or goal that I couldn't clearly identify, either. Felt a little manic about the insecurities that come with putting down little tiny roots in a place that I’m unsure about rooting in.

I looked at him, confident that my complex mind would exasperate (and then stump) him.

He cocked one eyebrow at me while he sipped his beer.

Then, without an iota of hesitation, he simply said, “it sounds like you’re bored” and wiped the foam from the side of his beard.

What?!

I felt like he’d hit me in the gut. Bored?! Me, Jane Kathryn, whose mind wakes her up at 4am, who showers sometimes just to listen to the ticking of her internal monologue as it goes through its life lists, who has an epiphany or a new project every hour, on the hour?! Bored?!? Jane Kathryn, the video producer with pens in her hair, talent to direct, pretzels to buy to feed her crew every 15 minutes, lest they starve?! BORED?!??! Ms. 'I Did Improv and Stand Up Comedy On Spontaneous Whims for Seven Years just for KICKS and Not For Purposes of Self-Torture"?!?

Shit. I thought. Maybe he’s right.

It stopped me dead in my tracks.

It was exactly the same feeling as the disappointment when you’re sick… miserably achy, hot, it feels like the world is ending between your knees and your neck … and you pop the thermometer in your mouth just to discover that you don’t even have a fever. Life is so much more fun to milk when there’s something sexy to proclaim, like ‘typhoid fever’… having to tell someone that you just have a cold takes all the fun out of being miserable.

And that’s what he did, right then… he took the fun out of the incredible complex throes of my complicated emotion by suggesting that I was simply bored.

Well, I’ve done a lot of thinking since that fateful winter, and I think that bastard was on to something.

Bored doesn’t have to mean that you’re lazy. Bored doesn’t mean you’re not challenging yourself, or that you’re letting yourself go, or that you don’t MIND being bored. It doesn't even matter if you're tortured by the mere thought of being bored.

But it does mean that your brain is craving something bigger and better than where you are. It can mean that you’re letting yourself circle the drain in some ways, even if it’s just to gauge how much it really sucks (sorry for the pun). But bored is not good. Bored is a desk job with no real potential, bored is a treadmill that’s not moving fast enough. Bored is settling for circumstances that aren’t fulfilling you as an individual.

Bored is not ok.
I keep seeking the scarier option in an attempt to slay bored. And despite all the heartache, all the thrills and raised eyebrows and blind turns, I think bored is the hell that I need to keep avoiding, no matter how much energy or nerves or heartache it takes to stay ahead of that two-headed doberman pinscher of a fate.

**author's note: at this point in the essay, our brave heroine grew bored and wandered away.

-Mae West