A Most Unreliable Narrator Issue #87 it is basic white girl season
Weight: 313.2
Bones or No Bones: Bones day!
TikTok
I finally got on goddamned TikTok. I got so tired of people sending me vids and TikTok slyly asking me to create an account every time I viewed, that I finally broke down and created my own account. Take all my money Chinese government! You can find me as @heronineinabook but be warned, I may not create any vids. I feel I’m much funnier on paper and in person then on video. I could also be deluding myself so who knows!
(Also, I’m no Noddle the Pug.)
Bored or No Bored
A couple of sessions back, my therapist made the comment they thought I was bored. I was in disbelief because I certainly have things to do! I keep a book blog now, there is always the Jane Austen blog which I keep more or less up to date. I’m taking my Viking class via Oxford Cont Ed and I’m also taking a work-related classes via LinkedIn Learning. I’m reading (print, eBook, audiobook) a lot more (hence the book blog). I’ve picked up cross-stitching to do while I watch telly. I’m also keeping a list of the media I consume to see just how bad I’m whiling away my time. Today starts the first meeting of my new D & D group which I’m super excited about. I am also very social online and have dates with friends on M/W/Th/Sun for telly watching or just talking.
I’m not bored, because I’m always constantly doing something, but maybe I’m just not bored enough.
There is something to be said to being bored. It’s the opportunity to let your mind wander and do other things instead of being constantly checked in and on. It’s the opportunity to just decompress and see the world around you. It’s the opportunity to just be.
Which I don’t do.
I’ve always been very good at keeping myself entertained. Latchkey kids know this story all too well: parents are working, and we fend for ourselves. I was always reading a book or writing stories or doing something to while the time away. Being bored as not an option but the enemy. I didn’t want to think about being alone or lonely, I just needed to keep myself busy until a human came into the picture again.
Jesus, that sounds depressing.
But it’s true!
It has been said that being bored is a benefit to your mental health. There are even books written about the topic.
Maybe I’ll read an engaging book about boredom but won’t that mean I’m not being bored?
Hrm.
Truthfully, my brain is always engaged in some form or fashion or another. That’s the joy of bipolar mania even when you’re stable: you’re always engaged and on. If you slow down and turn off, something is wrong. Meds are supposed to help with the slow down and turning off but for me, I’m more concerned about not triggering that mania buy extraneous sex, wild spending, and moving across the country for a man whose first response to my mental health crashing was not to help but to dump me.
(Bitter much? Yeah, I’m still salty about that one. DID I TELL YOU he’s been stalking me again? He’s gone and gotten married to wife number three, and he still needs to know I’m okay and what’s I’m doing. He doesn’t get that privilege so whenever I find out he’s snooping around, he gets instantly blocked. Fuck that asshole and his narcissistic ways.
Again salty and I’m straying from the point.)
I’ll surmise the articles for you: boredom helps generate creativity and giving us the time to wonder and decompress. If we are so fixated on something (reading, cross-stitching, whatever), it doesn’t give us time to just be.
Meditation also gives the same effect and, honestly, I’ve been afraid to let go. No real reason not to meditate. It does help when I let it and yet, AND YET, I can’t let myself go.
Maybe the revolution I’ve been hoping for is the one within my brain where it finally shuts the fuck up and sits the fuck down and just let me breathe without consequence or fear.
Heading down south
We’re leaving on Halloween to go back to Louisville for the winter. Even though we’re in our 40s, we are officially snowbirds. We’ve been able to hire a contractor (FINALLY) to start repairs on the cabin, we’re getting the glass in the front wall replaced and all the windows replaced also at the cabin. Within the next few years, we can hopefully try living up here for a year and see if it works. If so, it means we may move up here permanently and rent the Louisville condo. Or sell it! No idea yet, we’ve not gotten that far.
In the other tangent about being bored, we’ve had friends visiting just about every weekend we’ve been up here except for the odd ones (which were ones I was able to get a newsletter out with the last one three weeks ago and the one before that, a month). Don’t expect word from me next week as I’ll be driving for 10 hours down south. Will we miss it up here? I think so but we’re ready for Louisville. Everything takes planning up here, especially laundry and grocery shopping, and things are a drive from here. We can’t walk to our favorite Mexican food place or hit a local pub. We’ve been eating out four or five nights a week for the last few weeks as the food supplies run low and we don’t want to shop. We’re tight on space and seeing my full wardrobe will be like clothes shopping all over again. It’ll be nice to be back and not have to worry about bears or wolves hiding in the shadows while we walk the dog at night.
So, we’re heading down south and with that, the weekly catch-ups and existential dreads should be more regular as we’re back to our pandemic lives.
Things I Recently Wrote
Wonderful Thing
Fuck pumpkin spice! It’s apple cider and cake donut season beyotches! Our up north favorite place for cider and donuts is a local farm that’s been run by the same family for generations. The donuts, as well as pies, pastries, and bread, are made on site. They also sell farm raised beef and pork as well as their own line of salsas, jams, and condiments with a rotating vegetable and fruit stand of in-season goods. Sound delightful? It is! If you’re in the Traverse City area, we highly recommend you hit Gallagher Farms on M72. (Thankfully for us, but not for our fatness, it’s on our way home to the cabin.)
Interesting Things (or things to buy)
Cider and donuts. See above.
Links to Read That Are Not (Terribly) Depressing
Get vaccinated and mask up! There is a pandemic going on.
lisa x
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