Yesterday was an odd day. Both Robb and I felt BORED and out of sorts and restless. I felt like the kids in the Cat in the Hat - we needed Thing One and Thing Two to shake things up a bit. It was one of those days where we just didn’t WANT to do anything. We had all day, no small kids to take care of, no agenda, and we just didn’t know what to do with it. The concept of boredom is completely foreign to me. I don’t remember being bored since I was about 9 years old. We went through the motions of the day; a trip to the farmers market, house cleaning, Robb attempting to paint…. and yet, nothing seemed to satisfy. What’s funny about this scenario is there are so many days when I have so many things to do I am completely overwhelmed and I LONG for the potential of boredom. It seemed really odd that we both were feeling this way - probably some planetary thing; mercury in retrograde or that whole blue moon thing. Whatever the cause, we were both experiencing this overwhelming feeling of complete and utter boredom.
We discussed the scarcity principle. There is something to having limited resources, be it time or money or space. You are forced to work within set parameters and prioritize and organize. Too much time and space and choice seems to create an environment of paralysis - or at least it did for us yesterday.
We decided to just get in the car and GO. We drove around all the familiar haunts, checking out new developments in the hood (traffic already going nuts around Ponce City Market), people watching, looking at various options of things to do. At one point I looked at Robb and said, “How DARE we be bored!!”. And I meant it. I felt guilt over being bored. I should be volunteering or saving the world or…or….something. I should at least be embracing the ability to do ANYTHING I WANTED. Well, we don’t have a private jet, so Paris was out of the question. Where was that list of all the things I want to do in Atlanta but I don’t because of kids, job, responsibilities, etc., etc? We laughed at the fact that at least we were bored together. We are fortunate to truly just enjoy each other’s company in the face of activity or non activity. It was nearly 6 pm, so we pulled into a favorite wine spot, ordered up a couple of glasses of wine and some bread and pimento cheese (dinner of champions). We told our waitress we were bored. She laughed and thought that seemed pretty normal on occasion. I informed her it was ABSOLUTELY not our norm, and we just didn’t know what to do with it. She brought our wine and our cheese and we giggled to each other at the absurdity of it. Our life is so damn good it’s boring. We are never at a loss for words with each other luckily and Robb is never short on stories, so we relaxed into our evening and started to embrace the boredom. We started talking about the many many things we are grateful for in our lives - the big, the small- and somehow we got back on track. I’m not sure if it was the wine or the gratitude, but either way, we started feeling like ourselves again. Gratitude is powerful. Wine helps too.