Happy with a boring life?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

One thing I’ve come to realize about myself recently is that I really lead a somewhat boring life. And I enjoy it. I do the same things every week, for the most part. I eat the same foods. I read the same kinds of books and watch the same kinds of movies and TV shows.

So frequently, people talk about how the want to experience so many new things, visit so many new places, etc. Now, I enjoy some of that from time to time. But for the most part, I’ve found the things I like. That’s why I do them a lot.

But I think this makes me pretty unusual, particularly for someone with quite a wide range of knowledge and intellectual interests. And I think it puts me at a BIG disadvantage with the ladies, as it seems quite rare for a woman to have the kind of feisty, imaginative, intelligent, creative, argumentative personality I find attractive, but also be a homebody.
Anyhow else lead quiet and basically content lives in their little ruts?

2

Yup, I’m right there with ya. Mentally speaking that is. In fact there’s nothing in your OP that I wouldn’t apply to myself.

It is weird how it seems to be out of step with the rest of population but maybe it’s just that people like us don’t have counterparts in TV and movies so it only seems like it.

3

I’m in the repetitive microcosm down the hall.

Every now and then I get a bug to do something, anything, different. But generally even that urge is satisfied by something relatively unoriginal, like a few hours at the pub.

If you ever figure out a way to continue the anti-Renaissance lifestyle, and still manage to interest women… please, please share the findings!

4

I keep hoping for a comfy little routine, but I never find myself in one place long enough for it to happen. I’m moving to Colorado (for the fourth time), and am really hoping to never, EVER, move again. I would LOVE to settle into a pleasant routine (with an annual vacation to some exotic locale, of course).

5

I guess some people would consider my life boring, but I haven’t been this happy for at least ten years. Maybe ever.

6

I’ve asked myself the same question a lot last year. I had been in a comfortable rut for years, and sometimes I found myself wondering if I should want other things, bigger things.

You know the cartoon scenes where the hero has an angel on his right shoulder and a tiny devil on his left shoulder? The little devil would say to me: “See all those people doing things, going places, meeting people, moving upward, getting thrills, buying stuff? You’re missing out, you’re getting behind!”
And then the little angel would light its aureola and say: “My dear, happiness can’t be bought. It is a state of mind. If you have found what all those people are looking for so desperately, count yourself lucky, and pity them instead of envying them” .

Well, the debate between my two shoulders would go on and on, never really getting resolved. Then, I came across this gem of a theory. And I thought: “Well, maybe it’'s just different strokes for different folks! Some people like excitement, some like the peace of familiar things.
I just happen to be hardwired to be one of the latter.”

And then, eight months ago, I met my current fiancé. Ever since, my life and opinions have been Twistered. In those eight whirlwind-months, I changed relationship, moved house, changed cats, changed my emotional view of my youh, and I changed from not wanting kids to wanting them and trying to get them. Many of my opinions and outlooks changed. For instance, I want to be more social. I’m now more greedy about meeting people, when before I was perfectly happy with the people I knew and did my best to avoid social gatherings.

My new, changed outlook is this. All of the above still applies, (angel vs devil, what type you are). But first and foremost, we human beings are **adaptive ** and narrative creatures. When we find ourselves in a situation, we make up a story, a rationale, why we are there.
That’s what I did with my new fiancé, anyway. If I had stayed with my former SO, All of that would not have happened. And that would not have been better or worse; just different.

So we humans are storytellers. The emotional tone of out story reflects our feeling about the situation. Our stories can be, for instance, happy, bitter, angry, defensive or slighty worried in tone. I’d say the OP’s sounds slighty worried, and slighty defensive, but overall happy.

You are now in a comfortable rut. That’s partly the result of coincidence, and for a larger part the result of the many explicit and implicit choices you and those around you make.
If anything changes, (job, love, ilness, insights, hormonal changes, whatever) you will change and so will your outlook on life and your ideas of the best way of living for you.

And that’s good. We humans create such stories for a reason. We feel unhappy without a story.

But, stories can start to color our reality for us. It can force us not to see things because they don’t fit the story.
OTOH, when your stories don’t feel right and nice anymore, it can be a sign the story is tested, questioned. From the outside, or maybe from within yourself. What you do with that feeling is up to you. You can go back, reconvince yourself, and remain the same. Or you can change. Change a little or a lot. There is really no objective “best way”.

In the lottery of evolution, we are all already winners, just by being alive, and life is about how we choose to spend our prize money.

I’m glad to hear it. No seriously, you seem like a nice guy, and I’m glad to hear you came out well.

7

I’ve got someone whom I see three or four times a week. Sometimes less, like last week when he was working pretty much non-stop. I’ve got a nice comfy home that I love being in. My job’s pretty good most of the time. ACBG and I each have our own homes and our own routines at home. He’s not so much for surfin’ the net and stuff like I am. I’m not so much for watchin’ dvds for hours on end but he is. We don’t go out much. During summer my place is party central due to the fact that I have a pool. I’m really happy with the way things are now and he seems to be also.

A rut? Nah. A pretty decent life? I think so.

8

Yeah, I did have a really bad period there for a while. It’s all better now though. Thanks for caring. Really.

[sub]Not that the things I said in that thread don’t still hold true. They do. They just don’t bother me that much anymore.[/sub]

9

I have a happily boring life myself, and I very much like it that way. I work in a museum, which is a quiet, calm occupation with very little stress. For recreation, I read.

When Hubby and I go out, it’s always together, and we go to the movies or out to eat. We don’t go out with friends much because they usually want to go to clubs or noisy bars.

My husband and I do travel, but we don’t do the things that most people do when they go places. We avoid tourist traps in favor of museums and hiking. We also strive to avoid crowded locales-- if there’s a fair or festival going on, most likely we won’t go there.

I’m very happy with my life. People always look at me like I’m insane (which I admit is likely) when I describe it, saying such a quiet lifestyle would drive them up the wall. But I don’t feel like I’m missing anything. On the contrary-- I never have to complain that I can’t find time for myself, or to spend with my Hubby. I don’t have to complain that things are hectic.

10

I thrive on routine. I crave boredom. Someday when my three teenagers get outta the house, I will revel in it.

11

My life is boring, but it used to be interesting. Back when it was interesting I rode a dirt bike. I flew airplanes. I drove sports cars. I’d go places and do things. Later I rode a street bike and flew helicopters. I much preferred doing interesting (to me) things.

Of course I was able to do those things because I had boring jobs. (Actually my last job – which was similar in form to my previous jobs – became interesting as I became the ‘go-to’ guy and was able to solve people’s problems.) But there was a downside. After high school I was going to be a filmmaker. My friends and I made short films on super-8. That was fun. Then I got sucked into a career. Filmmaking had to slide into the background. I told myself that I was saving money for the next project that would be bigger and better than the previous ones. I lied.

Now I’m unemployed. No expensive flying for me! :frowning: And now that I’m living just short of Canada, I’ve found that there’s such a thing as a ‘riding season’. So much for regular motorcycling! But I’ve fallen in with a local studio. I’m still ‘unemployed’, but I’m picking up videography gigs. I’m a ‘partner’ in the business. Not making any money though, except on paper, because we’re gearing up to make a film! :slight_smile: We start shooting next week.

So my life is boring, but things are looking up. Next week and in the following weeks it will become very interesting. I prefer interesting.

12

Where the hell have you been all my life? I am exactly the above, but love my routines and “ruts”. I would rather sit around and discuss/explore a concept or issue than do just about anything else…

Earlier in the week, I was itching for some variety–some newness in my drab, wretched life. I met a girlfriend in a local pub (I have lived here for 39 years)–that I have NEVER been in.

It’s real nice. I’ll go there again. And I went home with my itch scratched for novelty.
Guys–we are out there, really. We just probably aren’t 21 (although I had distinct trends towards this lifestyle in my 20’s).

go hang out at a bookstore or library/reading room. You’ll find us.

(my husband, on the other hand, can’t stand my “boringness”–we are separating officially as soon as he finds a new job. He has always wanted to live somewhere else and experience another part of the country. He is job searching in Ohio. We live in Illinois. Sorry, another thread).

13

I’m boring, I guess. I’m small-city raised and congenitally nervous anyway, so I avoid crowding, tension and hubbub. I have my passions – old dead things like music mostly – but I like my routine slowpaced and my surroundings quiet and friendly.

My idea of a primo vaca is to go interesting places and do dull things. The most exciting thing I did on my visit to Vancouver was to take pictures from a Beaver floatplane, and that was enough.

If I could find a Lissa to spend my life with, I would die happy.

14

As a young child I had a thirst for adventure and glitter. I yearned for the kind of adventure that poor 19th century orphans seemed to get in kid’s books while poor little me had nooo chance whatsoever to get sold to pirates and have subsequent daring and clever escapes while travelling the world. I’d get excited when whatever metaphorical circus came into town and would watch the goings on. I resented child labour laws that I knew prevented me from landing myself a job at the circus,the fair, the travelling theatre show in the park, unlike those lucky kids in the old days. I wanted to travel and go places.

As a teenager I was excited by the subculture of the day and felt superior for checking out ‘real’ music and hanging out in the alternative scene and dressing ‘differently’ (and being really disapointed that I didn’t get any flac for that whatsoever so I couldn’t play martyr for being oppressed by being ‘different’ by the ‘system’ and the ‘boring people’. ) For all of my teenage years I believed the hype about how artists/musicians and non-mainstream consumers of the alternative subculture had more exciting lives than the ‘normals’. The problem was that I didn’t find that much exciting stuff happening. Basically people got drunk or under the influence and did the same thing as the ‘normals’: they dated and broke up in front of an audience. I figured that somehow I missed the good parties,or something and that I simply lived in too provincial a place for the real exciting stuff to happen. I travelled and went places, but did so by myself. It was fun. I learned stuff. I liked travelling without pre-booking everything and without a plan, but continued to be dissapointed by the quality of excitement I found.

In my twenties I realised that a lot of the mythical excitement that was reported just wasn’t. A lot of it was spin by the druggies and alcoholics who needed to call other people boring to hide that fact from themselves. It was spin from the people who couldn’t spend one minute alone but only felt they existed if they caused a reaction,any reaction from someone else. And a high percentage of these were also the self destructive drama queens wallowing in their self inflicted drama and wanting credit points for continually screwing up.

I slowly came to realise that my lack of excitement was simply due to me lacking the ability to pretend I was having fun when I wasn’t, and similtaniously that not lacking the ability/wish to cope with situations by myself meant that stuff simply didn’t spin out of proportion into high drama on a regular basis. Oh, and the biggy: if you pick your friends and lovers among people who are comfortable with themselves,who are to be trusted, who aren’t children in a grown-up body, who deal with their problems and mistakes too rather than blaming everyone else, who also do their own thing without wondering if they pass the test of cool, fuck yeah, life isn’t that exciting.

But boring? Hm, not to me. I’m hardly ever bored.

15

Great point Truus. I may be boring, but I’m very rarely bored.

16

In a different century I would have gotten meself to a monastery and happily lived out my life. I just don’t enjoy many of the things that most Americans seem to: Travel is largely a pain in the ass, shopping is stressful and boring, most people have nothing to talk about but Paris Hilton and TV shows.

Give me my couch, a stack of books, cable TV with BBC America, and a good pair of hiking boots for when I venture outside and I’m happy.

I’m wondering how many of us posting on this thread are enthusiastic readers and how that plays into a sense of happy isolation from Wal*Fart culture?

17

Um, I’m like that, and in my early 20s too. I was once in love with a snowboarder/partier type. He loved me, too. But we found each other boring. He’s now traveling the world as a student chef, and I’m very, very happy in the same rut I’ve been in for 5 years. I go backpacking once a year, and that satisfies my wanderlust for another 11 months.

I know that this is OT, but I’m so glad to hear that. I always look for your posts, and have found it sad that such an intelligent, articulate and caring woman was stuck in such an unhealthy relationship. You deserve better, hon.

18

There’s a difference (as you seem to realize) between an “exciting” life which consists of doing the same “exciting” things over and over again. Someone who goes clubbing every weekend probably looks at the person who plays Scrabble every weekend and thinks “what a boring life”.

19

See, sometimes in order to inject a little extreme variety into my life and “live on the edge”, I like to leave the second half off a sentence, and see if anyone notices.

20

[hijack] Oh my goodness–you made cry. But in a good way. (I didn’t realize that people actually read my posts–this is exciting! I feel like Steve Martin in The Jerk–I’m somebody! :slight_smile: ). It’s been on life support for a awhile, but we are both ready to move on. Sad, but inevitable and needed.

I also got tired of the club scene at about age 22. Even then I wanted to walk, talk, travel and think about Things that Matter. I hope I always do.

Thank you for the kind words–they are much appreciated!