Paused

The days float past quickly, benignly. I am bored without being bored. It's not the painful boredom of childhood but the foggier boredom of a hospital stay. I try to tell people what happened in my day, but nothing is really that important, and rehashing it feels unnecessary. It was a day. Pleasant. Nice weather. Yes. I think about watching television, but most television is stupid, and only when I am truly bored does this knowledge really bother me. I look at the covers of magazines when I go to pick up my prescription and know the angle and ending of every article without turning the pages. It's all so predictable. Maybe this is aging? It doesn't hurt so much as annoy me. I binge book after book looking for a new ending. For a surprise.

I am not sad about the boredom, because I know it will end soon. I can remember spending periods like this in my past, and they never last long. I can feel myself floating in it, this nothing-space, when I don't have much to contribute nor do I feel the need to take much in. My days are like the end of a Prince song, or the laser part of a Grateful Dead show, when you realize twenty minutes in that holy shit, it has been twenty minutes and I've just been standing here staring at that tree.

I leave my house only when necessary. I jog the same routes and realize as I'm coming back up my driveway I barely remember turning around at the halfway point. I find myself walking around my kitchen, shuffling items until they slot back in their proper places. We are hovering, the house and I, waiting for something to change. The leaves, maybe, or my mind. Until then, paused.