revolutionary in training

Do you ever find yourself with too much time on your hands and nothing to do? I’m not talking about having a weekend free to laze about in bed until noon; I’m talking about days and days of nothing. Perhaps you’re not working for a bit, are in between jobs, or on a 6-week vacation that’s now seeming a bit overkill. It’s a dangerous place to be, even if you like a hefty amount of alone time. Without any purpose to your day it’s easy to get sucked into depression, aimlessly floating from the couch to the fridge, back to the couch and yes, back to the fridge again (unless you’re an ice cream monger like me and then it would be the freezer). What to do? Make a plan to keep yourself going so you avoid those boredom blues.

What do I know about boredom? A lot, actually. I know I’ve travelled all over the world and lived in a few rather exciting cities, but boredom and I are old friends. I never got into the party scene so there was many a night in high school where it was just me and 90210 reruns. If I’d had Tivo back then I might never have seen the light of day. Thankfully, in college I started coming out of my shell a bit, finding ways to have fun with friends doing things like swing dancing, watching movies and so on. What a difference it made to have activities planned instead of sitting at home on the couch. And all I had to do was call up a friend and makes some plans.

These past few months I’ve once again had a lot of alone time while in transition between leaving work, moving, and preparing to live in London. I don’t mind having lots of different things going on, but for an extravert like me it’s particularly hard to have all this time waiting for the next part of my journey to begin. Rather than sit at home moping about it all, I’ve decided to use my newfound positive perspective to choose to see the bright side of things. Being that I’m back in my hometown of Vancouver, BC I have many old friends and family here so I’ve made an effort to have at least one visit per day. And so far it’s working at keeping my boredom blues away. If you’re finding you have just too much time on your hands and it’s driving you a bit bonkers, might I suggest planning one activity per day which pushes you to get up off that couch and out of those pajamas into the great wide world out there. After all, just one a day keeps depression away.