I’ve never understood boredom. I am very much the kind of nerd who enjoys learning. I’m mostly topic agnostic so life has been a pretty joyful experience of deep dives & rapt attention.
I struggle to be empathetic towards boredom as everything interests me. I don’t know if curiosity is innate or learned but I’m glad I have it in abundance.
The closest I get to understanding boredom is the exhaustion and brain fog that comes with illness. I’ve had an awful bout of Covid that I’ve intermittently worked through over the past two weeks.
My mind just has less capacity to hold onto focus. I’m in pain and the misery of the experience makes it harder to do more than the basics. I normally thrive on focus but now I’m stuck in ongoing being able to do tasks that require less cognitive overhead.
This has led to a kind of boom and bust set of cognition for me as I save up my focus for the deals that just can’t wait and then I am like a zombie on my fun unable to do much as finish a pdf about “situational awareness.” Maybe this is what they meant by boredom all along?