I’m always being chastised for finding things boring. I can’t count the number of partners who have criticized me for that, everyone likes to think that what they love is so fascinating, nobody wants to see your boredom but these boys are so masturbatory and they drone on about their fucking music and they don’t say anything worth listening to and I can not believe that I am always wasting my time with them. Why am I so attached to my own boredom? Why do I feel crazy when I want to leave a boring party, how deeply have I internalized the sense of boredom as socially inappropriate? You owe it to the world, you owe it to your partners to nod and coo soothingly as they drag on and on, you owe it to your professors not to roll your eyes in class as they ramble on about the community of fucking learners that we’re building and the ways that we’re a family, you owe it to your fellow feminists to bring a delicious dish to the potluck (No More Potlucks, most relevant feminist journal name ever), you owe it to your fellow activists not to roll your eyes as they talk about Marxism GOD they’re so dull.
I’m always complaining in corners but I’m not doing anything riskier than that. I am so angry about how bored I am all the time, it’s my fault for being bored FINE but I feel like standing up and doing something about it would mean letting loose this destructive force of feminist boredom and I would fuck my entire life up, and maybe that’s the way to do it, maybe we should ‘attack what destroys us’ (thx cute stranger at the workshop on insurrectionary queerness), maybe we should cause a scene, anything not to be bored
Everyone will hate you if you take up so much space, it’s oppressive, you’re asking for too much
Boredom is a code word for something here and I don’t know what to say about that, I’m bored because I will not let myself act because if I act I’m afraid of what I might do. This all comes down to what I learned in a second-year movement for actors course, we spent weeks on walking, I earned a credit for rolling around on the floor with my classmates, I learned more about myself there than anywhere else, ever. And it’s all so applicable, embodiment and feeling are not separate. And it’s cheese and it’s trite but I learned in that class that I couldn’t force a stretch, I couldn’t force a partnership in contact improv, I could only be present in my body and with that of my partner. Also I keep learning that I can’t pick and choose my ugly feelings, some of them are necessary for me to care about anything at all (like activism! eg) and some just look ugly to everyone so I can’t do activism in a lovable way, I can’t control that, I can try to frame my rage in ways that are sharp and thoughtful and careful and necessary but I can’t just feel rage in convenient ways and the same goes for boredom. Boredom is anger and impotence, boredom is dead weight, boredom is invisible/inexplicable fatigue. Feminist boredom is rage about something you can’t explain in any way that’ll make it seem legitimate, feminist boredom is closely related to hysteria mobilized as a radical force, feminist boredom feels like the futility of trying to talk when nobody gets it, feminist boredom is what we felt in middle school, feminist boredom is snapshots of a daughter-in-law (she shaves her legs until they gleam like petrified mammoth tusk, the drained and flagging bosom of her middle years), feminist boredom is what happens when you’re trying not to die at fifteen (fave quote in high school, wrote that shit on everything) and everyone wants you to be so much more boring, everyone wants you to just be content
Sometimes my boredom is unfair, sometimes I’m better served by a closer examination of what I want to dismiss
Sometimes I’m just such a classic collapsing-woman, fatigue collapse inactivity atrophy
I am so broke, the jobs I can access are so boring, my home is so boring, my roommates find me boring when I am interesting and charming when I am being boring, I can’t afford books on anti-capitalism, I’m going to get a job, I’m going to cry all the time, I want to wreck everything, boredom is so infantilizing and it’s so dull, all I want is enough money to buy great new outfits and brunches and trips and The Queer Art of Failure and The Affect Theory Reader and Ugly Feelings and etc etc etc you get the picture
Fuck everyone
I have no theory in me right now, I’m just busy being boring all the fucking time
At least I don’t live in Manitoba anymore
Fucking university is violently boring sometimes but oh I miss it but also I hated so much of my undergrad and I’m not even fucking done and I couldn’t bring myself to participate properly most of the time, I don’t know why, it’s all a mess
Fuck anyone who knows me and reads this and judges me weirdly, over-sharing is totes a legit political tactic and super necessary and repression is booooooring
(I know there’s another side to this where over-sharing marginalizes you and you compromise to survive and work through systems that will get you closer to something that isn’t totally alienating but right now I’m bleeding and hungry and broke and my house is annoying and I’m feeling really negate negate negate)
XOXO GOSSIP GIRL
