The Boring Life

Google linked me here to a poem

How doing nothing became my everything

In high school, my English teacher, Mrs. Carter was scary as shit.

Every day, she would walk into the classroom, striding through our conversations about all the things that fourteen year olds talk about, pull out a piece of chalk as she reached the board.

As soon as the chalk made that sound, we would stop talking and look up.

It always started with a circle. Quickly followed by a pair of eyes and a nose. As she began to draw the mouth, collectively we held our breath.

How enjoyable class would be depended on the shape of that drawn mouth. A smile, and live was good. A squiggle, and we were on alert. But a frown, holy shit, a frown meant the hour was going to just suck.

In that classroom, I learned many things. I learned to be critical of all I read. In that classroom, I saw the space shuttle Challenger explode. In that classroom, I passed my first notes to my first love.

And, in that classroom, I learned to hate the word boring.

“Boring indicates a small minded person,” Mrs. Carter would tell us. “If you are going to describe something use words filled with meaning and dripping with emotion. Boring is a nothing word. A throw away word.”

In that classroom, I learned to love the words pedantic, sophomoric and derivative.

It was in that classroom that run away from Boring began.

“He hated to think of his own life stretching ahead of him that way, a long succession of days and nights that were fine — not good, not bad, not great, not lousy, not exciting, not anything.” — Robert Cormier, The Chocolate War

It was about this day a year ago when I realized that the vast majority of my energy was being spent on doing versus being. That in my quest to do, I was missing the thing that mattered the most.

me.

I asked myself, what would happen if when I was asked what I was doing, my answer was always the same “nothing, just being.”

What would happen if I spent an entire year being the worst thing one can be in the world of tech entrepreneurship. The one thing that the current set of entrepreneurs fight so hard against being considered.

boring.

I embarked on a Year of Boring. I decided that I would cut out everyone and everything from my life that didn’t allow me the space and time to be just be. That required more of me than they gave. That created the inequality that drives us to realize that success is just like failure, a part of the journey, not the end.

I decided to reclaim the word from the inner Mrs. Carter voice that railed against the smallness of the word, and focus on seeing each day as it was, a passage of time, filled with responsibilities and choices, with my primary responsibility to be reducing choices.

I chose to be actively boring.

As you can imagine, socially the year was uneventful. And as each event passed into nothingness, my attendance became equally meaningless.

My first realization was that my need to be at an event was ecocentric. The event would be experienced by each person differently, with some loving, some hating and most being indifferent. My presence may effect individuals, but overall, the outcome stayed the same. Some had fun, some did not, and most fell somewhere in the middle.

That blow to my ego was unexpected, and in many ways, unwelcome. But, over time, it became accepted and the truth became ingrained in other part of my life.

I realized that I was an influencer on life, not a driver. Control is a construct, not a reality.

Years ago, when I got sober, I lost many people in my life. Most because they were only in it to party, others because of the damage I caused while partying. I came to accept my responsibility and culpability as truth, and I certainly grew because of it.

I never expected the same to occur because I was boring.

Some people embraced the renewed focused I had to give, others I stepped back from as I realized that their wants outstripped my needs and our continued engagement was spiraling towards negativity. But some people that I cared for and I thought cared for me, disappeared.

It hurt, but having gone through it in a much more devastating way, it didn’t reduce my resolve. I adapted to it as we adapt to the pain from a pulled bandaid. It just was surprising.

Except it wasn’t.

So much of our community is based on the appearance of success and the fear of being revealed.

Either because we think we are imposters, or because we actually are, others who aren’t participating in the scam can only be seen as detrimental to its proliferation.

The last half of the year was one of the most difficult of my life. I ended up in the hospital with a massive infection in my colon that started during a work trip to London, followed me back during a 15+ hour flight home (delays and customs suck), and landed me back in the ER and hospital on my return.

My dog Billie died from bone cancer. Nine days from diagnosis to death. Months of regret.

By the time it all hit, I was deep in my Year of Boring, and had finally learned how to be ok, with just being. I spent eight weeks healing, followed immediately with Billie.

If I hadn’t learned how to stop, I would have never made it.

My presentation scam has made it difficult for most people to understand how the majority of my energy is about finding the brightness that is hidden among the darkness of bipolar, and those months were dark.

Very dark.

The third and most important lesson that I have learned in the past year is the clear definition of want and need. I spent a lot of time answering the question “what’s the difference between a want and a need?”

I need to eat. I want a hamburger.

The most successful among us have learned to let need trump want. To make deciding between the two a non-energetic decision making space for time to be spent on higher order needs.

Think about it. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, says that we need shelter, not a 5 bedroom house on a hill. We spend so much energy on our wants, that our needs are often never met.

Additionally, our wants are not organic. They are driven by those around us. That 5 bedroom house? It’s because you see it as a sign of success.

You know what a real sign of success is? Fulfilment.

I need more time thinking and writing about this, but it has become the most important lesson.

I spent a year being rather than doing. I spent a year being boring. I have no idea what my 2016 theme is going to be, but as I move to LA and reset many relationships and aspects of my life, there are many ways it can go.

What I do know, is that Ms. Carter was wrong. Words are not signs of small minds; actions are, and no matter what you call it, giving time to the people and activities that matter — including just being with me — is anything but boring.