Denice's Little Therapy Corner (Pull up a been bag chair.)

I asked myself a question today. It happened after I had eaten breakfast: sausage, a pancake, a smoothie, and some fresh fruit dipped in chocolate. That isn't relevant, though. I was at a friend’s for a brunch with a handful of my favorite women and I did not want to be there. I spent the whole time I was there trying to convince myself that I did want to be there, because I should have wanted to. It was good food, good people, good times all around. It was totally my thing, but I was not feeling it today.

After that, I talked myself into going bowling with even more friends and guess what? I didn’t want to be there either. I willed myself to enjoy it. I tried smiling for a while, to see if that brightened things up. I tried being a little zany, dancing around and stuff. Overall, though, I was done with the whole thing before I even started. So I played a couple games and left instead of going out to dinner with everyone.

I got on a subway and a few stops later realized that I was pretty close to the Seoul Arts Center, which I hadn’t visited in ages. It used to be one of my favorite spots back when I first got here. I hopped off my train and headed over to check it out. That’s when I started to feel like I’d been here for a really long time. By here I mean here in Korea. I walked beside this big wall covered in vines and thought about how taken I’d been with the wall the first time I’d seen it, smitten really, enamoured. Now it’s just that wall I walk along to get to the SAC, which is just the SAC and not a super exciting place to visit, and the subway is just the way I get there, and not an adventure, and the people I crowd in with are just people and not mysteries, and I’m just another person who lives here and rides the subway and thinks things like, "I haven’t been to the SAC in a while, perhaps I’ll swing by and see what they’re showing."

And that’s where I answered the question that I asked myself back at the brunch, after I had eaten breakfast. One of my friends called me a prolific blogger, and I thought, "No I’m not. I’m a very lazy blogger." But I could kind of remember being a prolific blogger a long time ago (last fall?) and I wondered why I had stopped. That was the question: why did you stop blogging? Not just blogging, actually, most writing that I’d done so regularly just a few months ago seems to be on the rocks. I pulled out my journal while I was hanging out on the SAC grounds. I always carry it in my bag because I’m in the habbit of writing in it on the subway, or during work breaks, or wherever I catch a thought and a few minutes. I should say that I was in that habbit, because the last entry was over a week ago and only says, "My brain is tired. It’s on vacation."

But walking to the SAC I kind of pinpointed what’s up with me. I’m not just glum; I’m not just anti-social; I’m not just ‘not feeling it’ when it comes to writing or hanging out with my buddies.

I’m bored.

I’m a bit appalled that it took so much effort on my part to figure out such a simple thing, but I’m pretty confident with this diagnosis. I am in a boredom-induced funk.

I’ve given a little thought to defunking myself and have yet to find a solution that I’m very happy with except for this: I used to spend every weekend out exploring by myself, but now I have a bunch of friends and a lot of social and church events filling up my free time. I think maybe I miss the solo ramblings of Denice and maybe I need to trim back how much I force myself to be social, because maybe I’ve been social enough. Maybe.