Like what I hope to one day do with my student loans, I’ve consolidated all my social needs into a select few outlets. I have, on average, anywhere between 1 and 2 friends. Me and my partner are similar and spend enough time together that we’ve basically become one person, so they don’t necessarily qualify as extraneous social interactions.
I’ve written quite a lot about being some kind of horrible amalgam of an antisocial, deranged forest sage and some manner of toxic sea sponge that absorbs the validation and affirmation from the people around me. When you combine a general distaste for people and socializing with an overwhelming need to still be social, you get someone who tends to accidentally ostracize a lot of people while inflicting themselves too much on others.
But now the main outlet of my social interaction has left not only the city, but the continent. I’m a millennial with internet access, cute pets, a bank account and an impressive understanding of the alcoholic resources available to me, and even with all that, I think I might be bored.

It’s not boredom like I’m used to. When I was a spritely youth, I’d sit on the floor, roll my head on my shoulders, and yell for nobody to hear ‘I’m bored!’ because there was nothing available that I wanted to do. As a teenager, my boredom had morphed into an overwhelming dissatisfaction with life as a whole, and I also played too many video games so reality seemed lame because I couldn’t level up. I’m a very different person from all those other eras in which boredom characterized my existence, and the boredom has changed to match. It’s not that I don’t want to do anything, and I’m not even disappointed with life, which is a change for the better. Now, there’s stuff I want to do, but now some of the stuff I want to do–complaining about how much restaurants cost, complaining about other people, complaining about teaching, really just complaining in general–cannot have the same goal.
This is all a long explanation saying that I’m moping, generally unmotivated, and maybe only having a few friends was the social equivalent of only having one way of paying when you go out for a surprisingly expensive dinner at a place that used to have $5 kids mac and cheese which suited you just fine, but now it’s $6 and you’re not up to that kind of change.
I’ve been bouncing some ideas around for how to occupy myself through the summer.

There’s a bouncy ball in my desk. It has a smiley face. I wonder if it has opinions about politics. Looking into its black, soul-less eyes, I am left to wonder ‘would it enable my bad decisions quite as effectively as my less-bouncy human friend? Is that what I need from this bouncy ball? What bad decisions could I even make right now? It’s, like, 10 pm and I’m at home with my socks off so there’s absolutely no chance I’m leaving. Maybe that’s what this bouncy ball can bring to the table. Maybe I shouldn’t look to it as a replacement for friends lost, but instead it should be a source of new wisdom, new life, new perspective and new experiences. Or I can shove it back into my desk.

The bouncy ball is a dead end. I’ll have to look for social gratification elsewhere. This is turning from an introspection into my friendship habits into an investigation into what I can do to substitute the friend who has flown so far away that the maps are in a different language just to be fulfilled and enjoy life. Unforgivable.
I’ve spoken to at least three cashiers at Safeway in the past month. One of them could act as a viable stand-in for the next few months. But what would that say to them? How do you tell someone that you are only hanging out with them because the people you usually spend time with aren’t around? If I imagine someone doing that to me, I have the distinct feeling that I would be sad, possibly annoyed. There have been a few times when I’ll be out of the house, and I’ll run into a cat that I don’t live with. Obviously, in my ideal world this would never happen, but I’m a long way from being financially stable enough to support every single cat, so I just pet the kitties as I see them. But then I get home, and my cat sniffs my hand, and she gives me a look like she’s just watched me toss a grenade into the closet where we keep her food. And what does the temporary cat think when they smell my cat on me? Do they know they’re second best? Do they know I’m only giving them ear scritches because my kitty’s ears are not available for scritching? Is that what people with slightly more complex emotions than cats would feel if they knew I did the human equivalent of renting a replacement movie because I couldn’t find my copy? Maybe.
I could text all the other people who maybe forgot about me because of that time I disappeared for two years to get a Master’s degree.

How close is science to letting me build a functional human adult out of things I’ve had in my fridge for the last two months? Obviously, the only option left to me is to create human life, whether it’s through arts and crafts or an accident with a lightning storm and a corpse that happens to be on my roof at the right time. But then I’m left again with the dilemma of explaining to this newly born being that they only exist because someone else was in Germany and I got bored. Is boredom enough justification to build human life? I’m sure a lot of people have done that before, but do I really want to be part of a group populated by Victor Frankenstein and every parent 9 months after a power outage?
Or I could mope more.
Bored? Your diatribe as a demented forest sage rises above such mundane trivialities. Not sure why the forest sage part appealed to me…
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I also really liked the forest sage bit. Maybe I should commune with nature. That’ll get me out of this boredom
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Do it, do it. A safe spot somewhere, relatively free from human intrusion should do the trick.
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I know just the spot from my days hiding in the woods and spying on hikers from in the trees
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Hmmm. It appears you were already a wild man of the woods. Sasquatch comes to mind.
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I think I might more closely resemble some kind of horrible tree witch because I’d watch people while drinking tea in some bushes or in a tree and want to scream at them to get out of my forest.
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Ah, you mean a dryad. Understandable that you’d be annoyed. The greed of vested interests has laid waste to huge tracts of forests. Okay, scream at them as much as you like.
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I’ll take that as permission to revisit my forest. Next post will be written from the treetops!
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You go for it! 🤗
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Don’t build a person. But you might try reconnecting with someone who you haven’t seen in a while, or take up a hobby. I find knitting helps when I am bored. Just looking at wool is exciting, but then again, I think maybe I have become boring…..
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Hmmm this seems like a good idea that I cannot find flaw in. I do like knitting, and friends are good, I think.
Maybe I’ve also becoming boring because knitting sounds like a really good time
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If you want to really “live it up” try knitting while listening to a podcast. Woot woot! (I discovered themoth.org last year and the Vinyl Cafe….both have good short stories….some are hysterical).
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Knitting and podcasts sounds like a wild night I can get behind.
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It’s the perfect combination! If you get tired of knitting the podcast can be enjoyed with zero effort. You don’t even have to open your eyes.
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This appeals to my fundamental desire to never have to open my eyes or put any effort into anything
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I know right? It’s perfect.
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I, too wish I could create a Human Adult. Just to see what would happen.
The Human Adult would probably get bored too though.
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That’s a pretty accurate assumption. I’d probably make someone like me, and we’d just sit around and look at memes together
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Yep, me too. I would throw in some existential crisis YouTube videos also.
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And vine compilations for good measure
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Lmao, of course.
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Twitter is a great place to not be bored.
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Very much!
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