The Curious Case of Multiple Sclerosis Part 5

Bored as a Board

When I was growing up, my mom or my dad, my sister, my grandmother, someone in my life used to like to say, ”if you’re bored, you’re boring.”

This phrase has been ingrained on my brain since then. I want to do everything I can to not be boring, although I may be losing the odds on that one, and so I have a ton of things to do that keep me from being bored.

I have my regular “to do” lists.

I have my writing “to do” lists.

I have my “want to read” lists.

I have my “want to watch on TV” lists.

I have “my various, fun ways to get exercise” list.

I live right near a beach for goodness sake!  Just watching the ocean waves change in shape and strength is pretty exciting on its own.

And then there are the tasks my day is not complete without- catching the weather report, playing SongPop on Facebook, reading my Bible, checking in with my friends to see how they are and so on.

The point being, I have no reason to be bored, ever!  And not just because of things I should do or need to do, but because I have a ton of things that I want to do.  And considering how MS robs us MS’ers of precious hours in our day, I should be pretty busy during those hours.

Nonetheless, just the other day, I commented that I was bored.  How’s that even possible???

I hesitated to tell anyone this, except for all you readers and those who may randomly come across this post in a basic internet search, for fear that what I would hear back is, “if you’re bored, you’re boring.”

It made no sense that I, a person who basically needs 10-20 hours of sleep a night, and who has a ton of things she WANTS to do, and who is always complaining about never having enough hours in the day, should ever find herself bored.

I was so bored in fact, that I looked up the word.  Two synonyms of the word are fatigued, tired, and inattentive. Ok, that’s actually three synonyms but my brain was too inattentive to do that math correctly.

This in depth internet research was actually helpful.   Even though I probably would have blamed my boredom on MS anyway, as that’s what I always do when something annoys me, the online definition made it legitimate to blame multiple sclerosis.

If the words fatigued, tired and inattentive don’t prove that this state of being is the fault of multiple sclerosis, than what does?

I researched more even though I was exhausted and all I wanted to do was lie down flat and stay that way, which made me picture an actual board.  I was, officially, bored as a board and it was MS’s fault.

Leave it to multiple sclerosis to have yet another frustratingly, contradictory aspect that I like to call “curious.”

MS greatly zaps time from an MS’ers day due to how much longer it takes us to do the most basic of things and how much extra rest we need.  Yet in the few hours you have left in your day MS can cause your brain to become so unhinged, so completely devoid of any activity, that you have no motivation to do anything you want to do.

(For the record, antonyms of the word bored include energized, exhilarated, refreshed- not MS words at all.)

So being bored when you’re not bored and have no time to be bored is another curious case of multiple sclerosis.

But what to do about it?

I searched more and found that BuzzFeed Life has a list of 17 Things to do when you are Bored Out of Your Mind written by Leonora Epstein.  What was on the list?  Make more lists!

How is that helpful??  I already have lots of lists.  Also among the ideas were do a puzzle or plant an herb garden.  Clearly this list was for people with just regular old boredom.  It was not designed for people with the mega boredom that comes with multiple sclerosis.

I needed to know how to combat this useless, brutal time of nothingness that MS seems to insist I use to waste what little of my day that I am given.

I needed to know things I could do that didn’t require any real brain function at all.

So I started a new list, a list of 18 Things we who have MS can do when we are bored-

Sit Still

Lie Down

Jiggle your right leg up and down

Jiggle your left let up and down

Look at the ceiling

Breathe

Look at the picture on your wall

Look at your hands

Look at your feet

Pull up your socks

Look up the word ‘boredom’ on your computer

Swivel in your swivel chair

Rock in your rocking chair

Open the curtains and look out the window

Close the curtains and sit back down

Wonder how the spider got in your bedroom

Count this list to see if there are really 18 things to do listed

Look for lint on your living room rug

(NOTE-don’t even try to collect the lint, that is a project for when you are not bored!)

Feel free to use my list whenever you want readers; I’m all about helping others.  I want to do my part to help make sure that MS or not, you are never bored.

Because supposedly, “if you’re bored you’re boring…”

Image Credits

Ocean foam image courtesy of artur 84 at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Question mark image courtesy of Master Isolated Images at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Busy woman cartoon images courtesy of jesadaphorn at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Wooden board image courtesy of nuchylee at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

All five other images courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net