Boredom

10:50am, 10 minutes before class.

So I'm standing in line at Starbucks, minding my own business when I get the urge not to. So I take my phone out of my backpack, unlock, and tap Instagram. I flip though photo after photo, celebrities, fitness trainers, friends, family, and random people I know. And as I'm flipping though these images, my mind turns off except for the occasional Nice angle on breakfast foods or Great light on that selfie.

And after digging and digging, nothing 'interesting' was happening. So twitter.

What the hell? LOL. Retweet. Retweet. Sexist ad-- roll eyes emoji.

Then on to facebook.

43 likes for for my profile picture, really? #Ferguson, keep fighting. The homie's birthday: send message. Happy B-day... no, Birthday. No... Birthday!

Then... I look at my clock.

10:54am, 6 minutes before class.

Still in line for Starbucks. Thanks to social media I was able to consume more images, preform more social practices and sift through more advertisement in 4 minutes than most people 100 years ago would see in their whole lives. I look at my phone. Should I wikipedia search media 100 years ago? I can search Wikipedia for information about media 100 years ago. And the internet is only 23 years old! Social media didn't even exist 10 years ago.

Time Orientation and the Effects of Social Media. I wonder how people experienced time before social media. What was that tweet Neil Degrasse Tyson tweeted about waiting?

So much of life is wasted waiting in line: stores, traffic, security, etc. One hour per day sums to 5 yrs of your waking life

— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) August 5, 2014

More like 5 years of social media in lines.

What the hell am I doing?? That's 5 years if its an hour per day. 365 hours a year. Whaaaaaaaaat?

I get a black coffee and scurry off to class.

Believe it or not I was throughly shaken by the thought of spending 365 hours a year on social media apps on my phone. It's already bad enough that I'm using it on my laptop but waiting in line too?! Thats 365 hours added to the already uncounted hours I've spent on social media (granted I don't use my laptop to surf social media as often), but it's 365 hours I could definitely be spending on other things.

I've since removed all apps on my phone that have a fully functional web site. And now when I wait in line...

I'm looking around the room, trying to draw on what I'm seeing to inform me of my surroundings. I see JanSport backpacks and Converse sneakers, I see Nike shorts and long socks with tennis shoes. I see curly hairs and brilliant smiles and slouched posture and dripping umbrellas.

I get to wonder about their lives instead of just 'knowing', if you consider a social media profile knowing someone's life. I get to think about my next destination or mentally prepare myself for the day. I even do small meditations in line, trying to bring my mind fully into the present and not wandering around time and space in my brain.

But most of all, I get bored.

I know what you're thinking. OMG HOW COULD YOU LET YOURSELF GET BORED. or something like that. Or at least, that's how it seems boredom is being treated these days. Being bored is like the opposite of what anyone allows themselves to be. Thanks to apps, improved technology and a ridiculous belief that just because you can you should, it seems like the person who isn't occupied is suffering from what those of us who are preoccupied call boredom.

Personally, boredom has been my favorite part of my mobile sans-media experiment.

Have you ever really allowed yourself to get bored? Like, after the enjoyment of nothing to do, after filtering through all your social media, after deciding not to do your homework or worry about that big project at work, after you've tried watching TV but "nothing's on" and listening to music and not wanting it in your ears any more, and reading a book but it just feels "same old, same old." After calling all of your friends and none of them are interesting, looking at magazines and finding them lacking. After getting so frustrated that there is nothing,

nothing,

nothing to do?

I love it. Because somehow, it gives me the feeling that I'm on to something that all the preoccupation was distracting me from. That I'm getting closer to that inner purpose that tells you what to do to find the meaning in your life. And it's because when you're bored, you don't want to do nothing-- in fact wanting to do something is a part of boredom.

You just want to do something that's never been done before.

And I love that feeling. And when I finally do find something to do I know that it will be great. It will scare me. It will challenge me and it will devour my time with relish. And then it will leave me bored, yet again.

I'd rather spend 5 years bored over my lifetime than 5 years on social media standing in line. I'll get more out of 5 years of finding something to do than I will ever get by tweeting about how bored I am waiting in line. At a Starbucks. smh lol