It Was Interesting When I Said It
A group of actors sat in a circle and the
nicest one among them (the sort of woman who probably receives domestic help
from birds), admitted her biggest flaw: “I just bore the living shit out of
myself.”
It was a weird thing to hear someone say, and I
remember feeling a vicarious grief for her. She was so awesome, and though it
had previously been distinctly clear she didn’t believe it, it never occurred
to me that someone could find themselves so
boring.
Until I started to think about it.
Sometimes, when frustrated, I have a hard time
being interested in anything at all. Instead, I go to “mental chewing gum” like
iPod apps and Reddit to devour meaningless and potentially exacerbating drivel
to feel more exhausted than I did when I started. These days are bad when I
planned on being productive.
Today is one of those days. After weeks of
living out of boxes, finally getting the walls of my living space taped and
painted, I’ve been able to set up my tools the way I want them. For the first
day in weeks, I had no rehearsal, no work, no meetings, no nothing. And now I
sit here, aggravated at the fact that I don’t want to do anything at all, including just starting abjectly at a T.V. Mostly
because I can’t focus.
I haven’t worked on my novel in a long time.
These last few years I’ve questioned all the things I want in life, from family
to being a successful novelist. I haven’t felt compelled in life in general
since I spent everything I had in one emotional fell swoop and lost it all. At
one point, knee deep in depression, I said to someone, “I don’t feel like I
have a personality anymore.”
“Just be yourself!” they chirped back.
“Okay,” I said. “Nothing’s happening.”
Impulse, I believe, is a key to joy. Not just
acting on your whims, but having those whims in the first place.
I don’t feel funny anymore. I don’t feel insightful. I bore myself.
As I read through the first pages of my work in
progress, attempting to rewrite the 30k into something more intense, I just
don’t care. And then I cringe inwardly as I think of all the times I didn’t
hook people, that they didn’t care, even when I hubristically loved what I’d
done. I remember when they told something was too long, too confusing. “Nothing’s
happening.” “You’re telling a story, not just talking about stuff! ”I bored people. Well, I’m boring myself
now. Yet, I have to remind myself, not much else interests me either. That’s
what depression does.
When I write things, or say things, they’re
interesting to me. I dig deep and passionately. I recently received a rejection
from a local contest in which one judge told me I was, “Trying too hard.” This
usually means, “You’re trying too hard to make me like you.” Or “You’re being
fake.” It was probably the most honest piece I ever written where I really went
balls to the wall. I don’t often write something to win, and this was me
attempting to get back to that c’est la vie attitude I had in high school that
seemed to touch people. Sometimes (often) I feel like when I’m truly being
myself people are like, “Stop being so weird and just be genuine.”
How can you tell what’s interesting if nothing
is interesting to you? How can you tell if you’re expressing yourself honestly
when others insist you’re lying?
When I’m feeling anxious, I remind myself of
what I don’t know, of assumptions I make that aren’t founded in fact, but fear.
When feeling depressed, I remind myself how often it lies, how your view of
self and life becomes warped. Logically, how could you know this? You can’t.
You know you can’t. You know you don’t have enough information. You know how
you feel differently when you feel differently, feel better, feel more in
control.
How do you bore the living hell out of
yourself? Maybe it’s because you’re stuck in a rut. Maybe it’s because you’re
clouded by negativity. Maybe it’s cause you’re a big ol’ whiner and even you
can’t stand it.
Probably the latter.
But in the case of the Snow White of our tale, she
probably had some truth to it—some of her unspoken thoughts possibly are repetitive,
boring, and whiney. Whose aren’t?—yet I know as an outsider there was more to
it than just that “she is boring.” It is far, far more likely that our feelings
towards ourselves and the world come from a variety of factors, from self-awareness
to diet to situation.
What is the situation that caused my first lines
to aggravate me so? It’s entirely possible it’s the lines themselves. Yet,
before I call myself boring, I have to remember that it was interesting when I
said it, and though the context may have changed, it doesn’t negate that fact
that when I wrote it, I was interested and invested in what I was saying. The
thought, regardless of how it reads now, at least once served a purpose.
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