Boredom

Such a foolish word.

After the end of every run, we get three days of relaxation and chillaxation. While this may sound like a fun and rewarding end to 10 days of hard labor and long hours, it is actually a bland, painless, and wretched beginning to three days of uh, just plain old longness. I wake up, I eat, kill time till the next time I can eat, eat, kill time till the next time I can eat, eat, and go to sleep. I mean, like, I am bored shitless! Like literally, I just go shit just for the opportunity for something to do!

Well, thats a bit gross.

Boredom in and of itself is fine in small doses. It is just forces me to look for things to entertain myself with. Unfortunately, those options are few and far between here at good ol' Philmont. The entertainment is provided either on a computer screen or on a TV. And boy oh boy! They have cable! All kinds of shit is on the TV! Unfortunately, who the hell wants to watch it?! Nevermind, they have a lot of movies too! But, they are all on VHS (meaning circa 80's to 90's) and they are either about rebellious cops on the hunt for the killer of their family, and to also rescue their semi-retarded nephew who has been kidnapped for ransom, while simultaneously blowing up half of the city they are currently in. Needless to say, I think we made great social progress when we threw the writers of Escape from LA off of a cliff. While the handful of good DVD's provided entertainment early on, Lord of the Rings unfortunately gets old after the 16th viewing.

But wait! you say, surely there must be more to choose from! Well, I cry, there certainly is! I can easily go watch Avatar, the Last Airbender! For whatever reason, the nerds decide to take over a room each day, and watch Nickelodeon cartoons. There are just too many to push out, and besides, what else would I watch, Predator 2?

Well, I honestly don't watch much TV anyway, and the computer is restricted to, like, a few things... like email and facebook. So, early on, I figured I would just read. And read I did! I think I punched out 10 books this summer, going from classics like Catch-22 to slick and dark vampire books like Guillermo del Toro's The Strain. And, now, I feel burnt out. Just finished Stones into Schools, a must read by the way, if you enjoyed Three Cups of Tea, and tried to pick up Walden Pond. And couldn't. Just couldn't make myself read it.

Card games! Board games! Surely there must be something! But only dorks and socially awkward know it alls and religious nut jobs seem to play them. All they want is strict adherence to the rules and a poor soul to listen to them blabber about the age of the earth, how god does not love gays, and why Legolas is the most effective warrior ever, in the history of the fucking world! God damn them! All of 'em! Or just, uh, break their knees, so they will limp, and I can at least get away from them easily.

Sorry, too much hate? Whatever.

So, these past few days, I was bored. Like, super bored. So I watched Predator 2 and Avatar. So I sat down at the xbox and played a game of halo. Only one other controller, but, uh, whatever. So, I picked up Thoreau half a dozen times, read a page and said fuck it. So, I ate a hell of a lot of bad snack food, just cause I was so bored I just ate. Boredom sucks! I just sit there and force myself to do things I wouldn't normally do, just so my brain is in motion. I can't just watch clouds.