The vortex of boredom

If you thought that the first few months after moving to a new city are the most difficult, you couldn’t be more wrong. Agreed, life is tough in the first few weeks. You are looking for places to stay, you are struggling to make acquaintances. You’d think that after the novelty is worn off, life would become simpler. let me tell you, it is far from that.

It’s been close to a year now that I am in Bangalore. I have had my fair share of travels within the city. I have shopped a bit, made a couple of friends. But the desolation that comes after having experienced basic lifestyle of the new city is more poignant than the first days’ experience.

After you have lived long enough in the new place, you know that you can’t go places every weekend. You can’t read books all your life. You can’t cook new things every other day. The hopelessness that draws you in is powerful. I have spent hours refreshing my Facebook feed, hoping to find something that would engage me for a few hours. That’s it! I am constantly looking for things to engage myself.

When I was in college, time was always short. There was so much to read, so many practical notebooks to fill. I was always struggling to keep up with the load of work. Here, into my first job, I no longer have a goal in my life. I don’t have tests to take (if you discount the tests I have to take to get a promotion). I have turned to a person who watches celebrity gossip on Youtube just to pass time.

In between, I was watching Satyajit Ray movies, trying to understand cinematography. After a few days, that phase left me. Now I find myself fighting an inertia to find a good movie to watch. My bigger difficulty is that once I lose interest in something, I find it hard to go back to it.

How do things come to this? How do you prevent mundaneness of everyday life from engulfing you? I try to do something new or the other once in a while, rotate my routine around to stay away from boredom. Sometimes, I just fall behind.

Anyway, here’s a little something I created yesterday. It is part of a series of micro-stories to be shared as images on my Facebook page and Facebook wall. I hope I will continue to do it from time to time.

Do let me know you thoughts on the first micro-story. Your feedback, among other things, is what keep me going while I wade the thick, muddy waters of boredom.