bored, lazy, and unmotivated

A friend of mine laughs at me on occasion for some of my hobbies, which include:

- setting up and "maintaining" a recipe wiki for friends and family members to share recipes with one another (and most importantly with me), but which has failed to induce anyone aside from myself to make a contribution*,

- compiling a list of recipes from old issues of Fine Cooking, which I have been receiving as a generous Christmas gift from my Aunt Martha for some years now, to provide inspiration for future cooking adventures, and

- creating designs on my recently purchased spirograph.

Notice how I didn't say write a blog?

I can't entirely explain why he laughs. I suppose because he thinks these are silly activities (especially drawing with the spirograph). Because he thinks I seek idle pleasures to escape boredom. I can't disagree with him. But as a result of his laughter I had to stop and think about why I started spending time on these somewhat random endeavors.

At first, his idea that I'm simply bored sounded about right - just add a pinch of laziness and subtract an ounce of motivation. I come home from work and turn the TV on nine times out of ten. I would rather find some other way to spend time, but I find it hard to resist the ease of pushing a red button and finding instant entertainment (if not stimulation). I rationalize this by saying to myself that I'm too tired, and often that is exactly how I feel. Not so much physically exhausted, but mentally so. I just don't want to put much thought into anything. So as an alternative to TV I started doing a few things that also don't require much in the way of thought, but might be a little less of a brain-drain than the boob tube.

I don't believe for a minute that my job is so mentally taxing that I have a right to feel so drained at the end of the day. So I thought about why I end up feeling that way. I came to the conclusion that I exhaust my resources in simply pushing myself to show up everyday, to recreate on a daily basis enough enthusiasm to do what should be done, despite not wanting to do it and not being interested in it anymore. (This sounds way worse than it probably is.)

This led me to rephrase in my head exactly what my issues are at the moment. It's not that I'm bored, lazy, and lacking in motivation - all of which sound like personal failings to me. Being bored my Dad always impressed upon me was up to me; it only means that I lack the creativity to amuse myself. Laziness is self-explanatory. I think being unmotivated is a tricky one that perhaps could go either way. Ultimately, however, I believe people expect self-motivation from others, that an intelligent, educated person should have a plan, a purpose, an inner sense of direction that s/he is moving towards, and finding myself without one reflects poorly on me.

So, all these words I was using in my head to rationalize my new hobbies were putting me down and finding fault with myself. And perhaps that is the case. I certainly have many failings, as do the large majority of us, after all. But I think something else is involved here, something that I also have the power to change, but that isn't my fault: a lack of inspiration from the daily grind. I believe these simple projects I've started are part of my search for inspiration. For some grease to oil the gears in my brain, to get them moving again.

For a little while now, I've actually started to feel my brain rise up out of the stupor it's been in since finishing grad school. A bit of an exaggeration, as I think I have had some intellectual moments since starting my postdoc, but lately I feel like I've been having ideas. Novel ideas. Interesting ideas, even. I feel like my brain is working! And I think that developing a few simple projects is part of that, or may even have spurred on the idea process in other avenues of my life.

I'm alright with my friend laughing. I laugh with him, but I'm genuinely happy to have kicked a couple projects into motion, even these small, trivial ones. They are merely the first baby steps to set myself in motion, to gain momentum, to generate ideas, to learn new things. After these, there will be new steps, bigger steps. Ultimately I'll take leaps that lead me to my inspiration.


* Note: In the interest of full disclosure, my friend Lauren posted a couple recipes and another friend posted information about where to find special ingredients in the greater Boston area.