Or glassy-eyed. That was me today while drinking my usual at my usual, predominantly staring out of the window and yet, I cannot even tell you what I saw, probably because I saw nothing at all. I was elsewhere, at my induction almost eight years ago, when I thought at around about ten o’clock ‘gosh, this is boring stuff’, at my interview before then, and then at training courses in the States and later on various client sites, learning to use the coffee machine, the only respite from the Daily Chronic Boredom.
I think that the worst thing of all about my ex job (wow, does it feel good to use those two little letters infront of it), and I have plenty of choices on this one, was actually boredom. I am not thinking of the fleeting, passing, necessary, domestic boredom that occasionally skims our days. Sometimes it creeps on me as I am doing the washing up and prompts me to speed up so that I can do something else, something else not boring, that is. Oh no my friend, I am talking about the boredom that poisons your waking (and occasionally sleeping) hours, the boredom that keeps you as much company as the dreaded black dog, the filthy leech that sits on your shoulder and does not budge.
What to do every morning when you know that you are setting off to be bored? Bored, bored, bored to tears, bored, bored, bored into nothingness, bored until your eyes glaze over and water as you squint at the screen talking gibberish. And so today, as I was staring glassy-eyed into nothingness, a small crease of a smile corrugated my lips; it’s a funny one this, because I felt that smile coming from a long way away. The smile of change, of opportunity, of deliverance and of novelty. Perhaps I should also call it the smile of lack of boredom, the smile preculsor of new excitement and new beginning. I almost wish I had taken a picture of whatever was out of that window, to forever freeze in time this moment when I float in the no man’s land of the notice period, the no man’s land of sitting back, breathing in and congratulating myself for not having died of fucking boredom. This alone is an achievement, all the rest of it is bonus.
