On Boredom.

I'm botching this, but Sigfried Krakauer once wrote a great tract on boredom--his main point being that reaching a state of boredom was quite a noble accomplishment because this meant shrugging off all the pointless stimuli consumer society hurls at you.

Often I get up quite early, drink coffee, and then try and "accomplish" as many things as possible before I run out of energy. Well, not really, but this basic scenario happens more often than it should. I innately have this sense that there is something important behind being able to "produce." Production in the form of either grading all my papers, fixing my bike, doing the dishes, writing 2134290348 emails, or applying for a job.

But, is this all necessary? I love to play music and write creatively. These activities don't seem to make themselves to the tops of my TO-DO lists often enough. I definitely don't love writing emails, but I spend way more time doing that.

This seems very much like an American mindset. But I also know lots of Americans don't feel this way. When I lived in Berlin, people sat around all day and did NOTHING. I mean, really did nothing. If you exerted the energy to go out and get a one Euro scoop of icecream you were putting out some serious effort. That really made me try and keep my jittering American motivation-drive in check.

From a young age, many of us are constantly asked what we'll be when we're young. Everything builds in culmination of becoming something, and you need to produce--our economic system depends on YOU!--and so the relentless toil of Western life poses you the threat of seeking gainful, productive, employment or you'll be starving outside.

So, you could try protesting the final research paper on grounds that you've spent all your energy just to make yourself nobly bored and have no energy left for writing. Yes, you could try this my fellow COMP I revolutionaries.