A terrifying emotion for me is boredom. If I feel like I could become bored, or am worried about being bored, I get really anxious. Boredom, to me, means I'm not bettering myself or accomplishing things. I'm not out bettering the world. Boredom means I'm not busy perfecting myself. Boredom makes me feel worthless. As though I'm not contributing to the world.
As I know, negative emotions, including feeling worthless or imperfect lead me to engage in eating disordered behaviors. I've come up with many ways of covering up my boredom; disguising it, masking it, hiding it, swallowing it. I tell myself, "I'm not bored...Only boring people get bored." But I really want to tear my hair out, because I am so anxious, because if I'm not busy doing something, I feel worthless. Augh!
In my spare time, to keep myself from getting bored, I play. My playtime, for me, is time spent outdoors moving. It usually includes riding bikes, running, or skiing. I had to stop calling it exercise, because exercise sounds like a chore. Playtime is more of a privilege, something I engage in when I have energy and want to feel how that energy manifests itself while moving through the world. I love getting outdoors and breathing fresh air, running through the wilderness like a wild animal.
Due to the Rim Fire in Yosemite the smoke is so thick in the Lake Tahoe Basin, AIRnow.gov is rating the air quality "unhealthy for everyone." Not just "unhealthy for sensitive groups," it's "unhealthy for EVERYONE." The smoke has filled the basin for almost two weeks now, keeping us indoors, keeping us from our normal playtime patterns. And, you guessed it, I'M BORED.
I've read, knit, worked on training my dog, and I have terrible cabin fever. I'm working on processing boredom and everything that comes along with it.
First, I admit that I'm bored. It doesn't make me worthless. It doesn't make me imperfect. I have to keep telling myself to take each day (and each minute of each day) as it comes and I don't need to keep myself busy with exercise. I need to embrace the action of sitting, "doing nothing". I have to be okay with sitting still, reading a book, watching a movie, not going outside to exercise.
Second, I have to keep eating healthily even without my playtime. I use exercise to justify my eating habits. I still do this even after years in recovery; I base how much I eat on how much exercise I get. And right now, we can't go outside and play because it is "unhealthy for everyone," so I have to work on letting go of the notion that I can only eat if I'm exercising.
Gyms don't provide playtime, they provide exercise, and I find them triggering for me, so I haven't gone to a gym to get my wiggles out. I feel like I'm going crazy.
My goal for today is to finish this blog post and embrace my boredom. I will not let it rule me. I will not let my boredom shame me. I will not let my boredom make me feel guilty for existing. I will patiently wait for the skies to clear. I will watch movies and knit. I will appreciate the day off from work. I will journal. I will not frantically try to fill my time with cleaning. I will try not to label myself as bored, but rather enjoying a nice, relaxing day off from work. I will tell myself that I deserve to sit and think.
I deserve to take a few minutes of stillness.
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