The Fight Againdt Ennui

[Angrboda]

I'm not sure that I understand what ennui is. After I lost my fingers, I still had the goal of teaching English in Japan. After a few years though, it seemed less and less like a goal that I could achieve due to my failed academic career in college. Eventually I gave up on it, and with it gave up on my language studies. For many years I felt aimless, without a motivating passion or goal. I despaired that I didn't know how to replace the interests that had consumed me. I think recurring depression had something to do with it. Now that I no longer have issues with depression, I no longer worry about it. I have plenty of things to fill my time, and I still get less done than I'd like, but worrying about having an overriding pursuit to organize my time no longer consumes me.

[FrustratedFool]

Ennui is a sort of pervasive and persistent bored dissatisfaction with life's banality.

[MarcusA]

I usually kill or live in a poem.

[MarcusA]

If I want to kill my boredom, I smoke tobacco and drink coffee.

[Belacqua]

How do you stave off the ennui and boredom?

There's another category that might be relevant here.

People used to talk about acedia. Unfortunately this usually gets translated as "sloth," which is very misleading. 

It's not laziness or boredom, but might be a consequence of one or the other. 

It's about giving up, not caring anymore. Like "who cares if I do a shit job because we all die anyway?" It's giving up on any kind of ambition, including getting better emotionally, spiritually, socially. 

In the US now they talk about "deaths of despair," which are cases where people just give up on life and let themselves die. Sit on the couch, self-medicate, and play video games until your body gives out. 

(Since faith and hope are Christian virtues, and states of acedia lack these two, it was classified as a Christian sin, but we don't have to think of it that way.) 

But I think pep talks ("just go back to school!") seldom help. The only way I can think of to treat this is social. Non-capitalist means of connecting to others and working toward something meaningful.

[MarcusA]

The world has no meaning but what we give it.

[FrustratedFool]

Meaninglessness seems another issue, though I can appreciate these things are often connected.

Maybe if one has some sort of ambition then ennui wouldn't exist because they'd always be something to strive for. Dunno.

I certainly struggle with both.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I used to run with wolves when I was bored. Volunteered here: http://endangeredwolfcenter.org.

[GrandizerII]

How do you stave off the ennui and boredom?

I don't really know if I've ever experienced ennui (in any considerable sense, at least). I rarely get bored and always find something interesting to do. Even with no access to the Internet or books or TV, I will find a way to entertain my mind.

[arewethereyet]

I have always been able to entertain myself. I was an only child for a time and we lived in an area with no other kids close by. I learned how to fill time. Being an introvert helps. As age advances and health declines I have more and more ways to entertain myself right here at home. I do work part time from home at a job I like and feel that I am good at. I circled back to sewing when the pandemic started. I read or listen to audiobooks and podcasts. We have a house full of critters...someone always needs to be fed, cleaned up after, groomed, or snuggled/played with.

Now and then there will be a day or so when I feel like I spend a lot of my day pacing around the house but that's rare. I know I'm doing it and that I will eventually land on the next thing I want to do and the fidgets will go away again for a while.

I was so prepared for the pandemic shutdown that it was like it didn't even change my life. Even with restrictions lifted I still prefer to stay home...this is where my stuff's at. LOL