what shall i do now? / #28
on boredom and restlessness
“What shall I do now?”
My nephew asks this for the fifth time in an hour, or maybe the tenth. I’ve definitely lost count.
“You need to learn how to be bored,” I tell him, with the confidence of someone who obviously and definitely has this figured all out.
He stares at me for a second, then groans before he runs off for a minute, before he runs back and asks that question again.
Here’s the thing: I am a complete and total hypocrite.
Me, who turned my functional retirement into a project with milestones and tracking systems.
Me, who spent an hour researching a $120 purchase last week (my bag! I have a new one now, which is very exciting).
Me, who tracks bubble tea consumption and time allocation and energy management and portfolio performance and—
Me, who’s telling a 7-year-old to learn how to be bored, while my eyes dart at my devices switched on in front of me.
For fifteen years, I trained myself that idle time is wasted time — and yes, I know how insufferably productivity bro that sounds.
But here’s the problem: the skillset that got me to “financial freedom” is incompatible with actually living the margin I built.
I optimized my way out of needing a job, but I sure am trying to optimize my way into knowing how to exist without one, too.
I bought myself time — but right now, I still don’t know how to spend it without feeling like I’m wasting it.
I don’t think we’re even talking about the same thing when we say boredom.
For him, boredom is the gap between activities.
For me, boredom is… I don’t even know what it is. I don’t think I’ve experienced it in years.
Just restlessness, or the nagging sense that just existing isn’t enough.
My nephew asks what shall I do now because he’s seven and he’s bored and he wants me to fix it (possibly by giving him permission to switch the television on, or hand him my phone for his growing K-pop interest).
I ask myself the same question, just… more internally, and more anxiously.
What should I be working on now? What experiment should I run next? What framework should I be developing? What content should I be creating?
It’s the same question, just pointed at different things.
He’s looking for the next activity to fill up his time. I’m looking for the next optimization.
Neither of us knows how to just… be.
He needs to learn to tolerate the gaps between activities.
I need to unlearn the belief that gaps need to be filled.
You could be planning that trip you’ve been thinking about for months.
Should you check if that thing you ordered shipped yet?
Remember that framework you were developing? You should write that down before you forget.
Actually, you should probably check your email.
And before I know it, I’m on my phone, or opening my laptop, or reaching for a notebook, because my brain has successfully convinced me that sitting there thinking about nothing is somehow... wrong, wasteful, or gasp, unproductive.
I achieved financial independence to buy my freedom. But freedom from what?
From having to work 80 hours a week, sure.
But am I really free if I can’t stop optimizing, when I can’t tolerate the space between activities without filling it with another system, another framework, another project?
I bought the time, but I don’t know how to spend it on nothing.
Tomorrow, my nephew will probably ask what shall I do now again.
And I’ll probably tell him the same thing.
And I’ll probably still be a hypocrite, but at least now I know what I’m trying to learn.
(For the record: I’m turning it into this essay instead of just sitting with the thought.
I guess I just can’t help it.)
Until next time,
Jalyn
Gosh. What does one do with all that time?!