Black Dog of Boredom

Boredom is just about the worst curse you can be afflicted with.  It insidiously seeps into every corner of your life, draining away your motivation and energy.  It robs you of all hope.  It is the close cousin of depression, laying the groundwork for the black dog to creep in and start eroding your sense of self worth with its constant yapping.  I've mentioned before how boring I've been finding work of late, but now the boredom has started creeping into the rest of my life, like an infection.  It is getting increasingly difficult to motivate myself to do anything - I was already at the stage of having to absolutely force myself to get out of bed on work days, but now that's extending to non-work days, too.  My lack of motivation for work is clearly spilling over into the rest of my life: all of my current projects are becalmed by indecision, procrastination and lethargy.  It doesn't help that this is a miserable time of year - it might officially be Spring now, but it is still wet, cold and miserable outside for most of the time.  It doesn't exactly inspire you to actually do anything. 

But clearly, I need to do something.  I need to engineer some kind of break from the monotony of work.  That's the problem - work takes up so much of our time that its problems will inevitably start to dominate our whole lives.  Obviously, in the long term, I need to do something radical about work, like change my job or find a way to give it up entirely.  But in the short term, I need to reclaim my non-working life from this creeping ennui and star making better use of my time.  I need to start actually doing things again.  We've got Easter coming up next month - an opportunity to take some of the leave I've got backed up and get away from work for an extended period.  In the meantime, I need to start reclaiming my time by actually doing something constructive tomorrow, after all, I gave up working Fridays precisely to give myself more down time and get away from work-related stress.  You know, what I really need to do is have an adventure of some kind, just go and throw caution to the winds and so something reckless.  But not too reckless.  Or expensive.  I may be bored, but I'm still financially prudent.