Anne Enright had this to say in the Guardian on Friday. I think she’s right in what she says. Dh and I like to think we’re pacing ourselves for the long haul!
Anne Enright
Honestly, there is a lot to be said for tooling about all day, looking up recipes and not making them, not bothering to paint the living room and failing to write a novel. In the middle of the messy non-event called your mid-afternoon, you might get something – a thought to jot down, a good paragraph, a piece of gossip to text a pal. Boredom is a productive state so long as you don’t let it go sour on you. Try not to confuse the urge to get something done with the idea that you are useless. Try not to confuse the urge to contact someone with the thought that you are unloved. Do the thing or don’t do it. Either is fine.
I find big music helps at fateful times. Rachmaninov is good when the news is bad, Mahler also works. Poetry helps and I have turned, in recent days, to the religious work of John Donne, George Herbert and Henry Vaughan. But I also get bored with big thoughts and that point of boredom is the moment I am looking for – when I want my teenager’s mellow 70s Spotify mix, or a Cary Grant film.
In the first days of locking down, I felt as you do after trauma: language was no use to me. It has come back slowly, because it always does. I know this and I trust it. Meanwhile, I do not try to push a broken machine. I wait for boredom to kick in because boredom, for me, is a very good sign. It is the beginning of pleasure.
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