Boring

Join me on a typical day: Worldle in bed, shower, get dressed, make school lunch. Cajole my child into eating breakfast; wolf down an everything bagel with cream cheese and cucumber, and we are out the door. Walk to school. On my return, scroll my horrible phone (more on this later) for somewhere between 15 and 75 minutes. On a busy work day, conduct meetings, calls, interviews; maybe write a report or review a recording. Do a workout—dance, weightlifting—and then, fifteen minutes before the school bell rings, get a chocolate-covered granola bar from the pantry and walk back to the school. I say hello to the parents of my child's friends, many of whom are my genuine friends. The children erupt from the building with screams (joyful, sobbing), and we linger for playground time. Dinner is served; we watch television. At 8 PM, the bedtime negotiations begin, which includes several false starts (delays on showers, a snack, the need to catalogue the Happy Meal toys one last time), and then lights out. I check on my child, not asleep, once, twice, three times. Sneak downstairs and eat honey-dijon kettle chips dipped in cottage cheese. Watch TV. Do the Sudoku. Do the crossword. Enough.

I'm currently reading the Best American Essays 2025, and it's exactly the kind of thing I like: personally essays, theoretical musings, memoirs, travelogues, political reflections. Not all of them are winners. The essay that I was most actively bored by, in a way that made me question if I was still able to engage with challenging content—you know the kind, the high-level thinkpieces that dominated my undergraduate degree and made me feel overwhelmed and stupid—was called "The Olive Branch of Oblivion," and the process of reading it was so boring that I actually detached from the content and observed myself, bored and reading, marvelling at the fact that I could be so bored with anything. (Ironically, one of the essays this year is called "On Boredom," but it was interesting to read.)

It's a feeling I know well. My life is boring. I feel boring. Those aren't the same thing. 

Boring is subjective. What is boring to me—Marvel movies, prestige television, marathon training—is fascinating and fulfilling for others. What I find interesting—gossipy New Yorker articles about contemporary art, endlessly trawling knitting patterns, children's dance recitals—is someone else's idea of psychic death. My life is predictable: same routines, same destinations, same companions. Don't misread me: I do love my routines and my destinations and companions. There is comfort in knowing what might be coming on any given day, because for many years and for many reasons, my life was chaotic and unhappily unpredictable. Now? I know what is coming. It's reassuring, but it's also aggressively familiar.

I feel boring myself, though, and that's more of a problem. I have interesting hobbies and activities (I knit, I run a discussion group for the local Universalist Unitarian fellowship, I read, I make 'zines and art, I write, I dance), and I'm proud of the work that I do, both paid and volunteer. My life is full of good hobbies and time well spent. 

However: I'm slightly—okay, more than slightly—undersocialized. I have wonderful relationships, but seeing a friend for coffee, even weekly, isn't the same as the daily debrief with a partner. Some of my loosest friendships seemed to have withered over the last few months, so that haze of friends I might see twice a year has dwindled significantly. I need to make some new connections, but the structure of my life (and the parenting demands it includes) means that normal-person socializing is hard. Can I, a single person, invite a couple over for dinner without it being weird? Can I even put together a dinner that doesn't involve chicken nuggets any more? Should I host a game night? Should we do...karaoke? Is that the right move?

I over-correct by relying on my phone for stimulation, and the algorithm feeds me what it knows I want. I see content on knitting and on feminist collectives, about fashion and from queer comedians. I scroll because I'm looking for something that will feel like it completes me, but the reality is, the experience is designed to deny me that. The hunt, though, has begun to feel boring: low-level dopamine unrelated to anything I'm doing in my own life.  

This is layered onto a sense that modern life is compressing us all into a single dimension: consumer. We consume content, sure, but we're simultaneously encouraged to think of ourselves as content creators, a term that is ubiquitous but has always struck me as sort of sinister. Content, you say? What kind of content? And in the end, it doesn't matter at all. Productizing ourselves into content, and then consuming other human-product content, is the driving force. 

Now, I know this is a take you can characterize as "very online," and it's true that many—maybe most—people don't think this way. It's also true that I do. I am the only adult in my house, and if I want to engage with adults, it's typically mediated through technology—I watch actors on TV, I have parasocial relationships with podcast hosts and radio DJs, and my friends are present through texts or memes or phone calls. Again, not always—I treasure my coffee outings and evening walks—but enough that it's the default. And there's only so much I want to cram into a text, a voice note, a blog post. My dimensions might also include artist, lover, parent, child; they include my odd obsessions and my secret selves. I want to be more than what can be sold to me; online life resists that. 

That has led to a feeling that I myself am boring. Friends reassure me I'm not; great, thank you, friends. Internally, what I can't seem to reconcile is that I have a deep need to feel in control and safe—the daily everything bagel—especially after a long, long life season of shake-ups and meltdowns...and I also have a desire for real experiences, closer connections, more experimentation, all of which require a degree of vulnerability and unpredictability that feels daunting. I don't know what would need to specifically change—a new partner? travel? a different kind of job? more commitment to art?—but I do know I'm pretty risk-averse and likely staying that way for a while. I know my phone is not the answer, but I don't know, exactly, how to de-boring-ify myself. 

My new year's resolution was to "have more fun," and I think there's something in that. When life gets too same-y, the fun leaches out of it. I have a lot of pleasure in my life, especially small ones—I've trained myself to be an admirer of fireflies and a savorer of a newly opened Coke Zero—but I don't have a lot of the "wait'll I tell you about THIS!" experiences that can really zing up a cocktail party. The closest I come these days is, uh, a really great audiobook, and I know I can do better than that. And also: it is hard to dive into new experiences alone. And also also: I can definitely be braver and try harder. 

When I think about the type of fun I want to have, the type of un-boring I want to be, I think about freedom. I think about singing along to the radio on a shining backcountry road trip, or about "girls weekends" full of really nice gluten-free desserts and huge sweaters. I think about bringing my kid to the drive-in movie theatre, or about a long bike ride on a cool morning. I think about camping in a drizzle, hiking in low mountains, making mistakes while sewing, being bad at painting but getting better at collage. I think about eating a great meal at a new restaurant. These are all fun, right-sized for my life, and available now. All I need to do is do it. 

All I need to do is do it. Same as it ever was.