Someone else wrote: What the hell _is_ "bored", anyway? You're in this moment, right now. You're not doing anything. This moment is no different than thousands of moments where you're between tasks or thoughts, except that this moment happened to be adjacent to a prior moment of not doing anything, _and_ one imagines that the next moment will be one of not doing anything. What's so scary about that? That sounds like a respite.

I responded:
After some thought, I don't think "bored" is the state of not doing anything. Bored is the state of *being dissatisfied* with what you are doing (or not doing), and failing to generate any more appealing alternatives.

I think the wider issue has something to do with what conditions you need to feel alive, and deeply satisfied with being alive. I have a nasty habit of achieving something resembling balance (or contentment, or "enough"). But that's not enough of a challenge, and challenge is apparently something I am deeply uncomfortable without, so I go off and add one more project, responsibility, animal, commitment, whatever. Anything to make my life perceptually harder, because I'm hooked on struggle and overachievement, and suspicious of contentment.

I didn't know this until I wrote it down just now. Shit.