Today I snapped up from my computer, my breath short with realization. I had an epiphany: I’m boring.
First, I panicked. Then I got angry at my boyfriend. He’s the reason I’m boring. He domesticated me into a Netflix-loving, ice cream-eating degenerate. But then, after much self-restraint and deep breathing and some swearing, I remembered how it feels when he stands behind me when we brush our teeth, his hand on my hip as we stare at each other in the mirror. Or the way we cackle when we’re stoned on the couch eating cinnamon buns and watching rom coms. I remembered that I cherish these simple moments just as much as I love backpacking 30 miles into the wilderness with him.
I think my soul got sucked into the endless Instagram scroll of perfectly curated adventures. I forgot about the necessity that’s found in monotony. The regular stuff. The inescapable everyday things that color the background of life. What you’re doing on a Monday simply isn’t sexy enough to be given a second thought. To get posted on your grid. But what if it is?
It’s easy to gloss over a weekday to get to a weekend, but in the process, we lose something. We seemingly live more adventurous lives than ever yet melancholy is at record highs, nearly everyone is medicated, and we’re all still…lost. Here’s my inkling as to why: we’re disconnected. We focus so much on escapism—how far can I go, how unique can I make this next trip—that we begin to glaze over how we live our everyday lives. I know I do it. It’s in these neglectful moments that something began to fade deep within me, and a weekend climbing trip to St. George wasn’t enough to brighten that shit up again. The background color of my freak flag was gone.
I got comfortable with chasing highs. I was so focused on the peaks that I didn’t realize I was turning my life into a goddamn smog-choked valley.
So yes, today I ‘woke up’, if you will, in the literal smog-choked valley of Salt Lake City and realized that life was feeling excessively underwhelming. I’ve checked the boxes of a good boyfriend, a steady job, a nice apartment, some trips to look forward to, but still feel…meh. As more boxes get checked, the void expands. The question reverberates louder in my mind, “Why am I so empty?”
I recognize the extreme privilege embedded in this question, but nonetheless, it is a pervasive feeling that remains leached in society. The more “successful” we become, the less we have to fight for what we want, the easier it is to attain frivolous, unbalanced escape. The more complacent we get in developing the intangible—our soul purposes, our primal desire to be free.
While it now seems obvious as I write this, I have been mistaking emptiness for boredom. And it’s not my boyfriend’s fault or my boss’s fault that I got here—it’s mine. It was the choice to compare experiences, to pit my everyday moments against some of my finest adventures. Neither one is better than the other. They’re all connected. One feeds the other. Together, they add contrast to the colors of my freak flag.
Now that I’ve finally cleared my head, I can revel in the good stuff—enabling myself on a daily basis to let that freak flag rip. I try to focus on presence, an appreciation of each day and how I can use that day to 1. cherish what I have in front of me and 2. intentionally align my actions with the life I want. As a creative, this means putting time into creating for myself and flexing boundaries. Into thinking about how I can fulfill myself and not get sucked into the endless vortex of fulfilling or matching others’ visions. And that sometimes I can do that from the couch, guilt be damned, knowing that boredom and monotony are a beautiful part of life.