I'm a total square
July 6, 2019 5:04 PM   Subscribe

My life is hectic and very tightly scheduled; I don't have a lot of time for indulging my hobbies and interests anymore, and I feel like I have become boring. What's some useful self-talk I can use to combat this feeling?

My job takes up a lot of my intellectual, emotional and physical energy, which means that I have started to be much readier to abandon any activity which I feel to be a drain on my energy. But I always used to be the kind of person who had plenty of different interests and hobbies. Now I feel I don't have anything.

I have a slight hang-up about being 'uncool' that's left over from school days, and that's coming back now in full force. Basically:
I don't read the news (I don't have time, and I find it stressful and depressing when I do)
I don't watch much TV
I don't cook (I don't enjoy it)
I don't watch movies (who has the time to go out and watch a movie at the cinema? It feels like a ridiculous luxury)
I don't listen to current music - I do listen to music but for me music isn't really a thing I bond over or talk about with people; my taste is not particularly good
I have no hobbies. I used to write stories, but I have absolutely zero creative energy at the moment. It usually kicks in on vacation
I don't date - I hate dating. So I never have any interesting dating stories or dating quandaries to share with people
Also, because my family have had bad experiences with addictions, I largely avoid intoxicants, I've never smoked or taken any kind of drug, and I drink very seldom.

What do I do? I read (slowly); I try to get some regular exercise in; I read stuff on metafilter; and I spend a lot of time maintaining my social/familial relationships (I've posted about this elsewhere on AskMe... I live alone and my family live abroad, so I invest heavily in maintaining the lines of communication with them, as well as making sure I get regular and quality time in with my friends who live in the same city as me).

My (very cool) colleagues are always doing things like going to music festivals and film screenings and art shows, and I just don't find any of that particularly tempting and would much rather chill with a friend over a drink or organise a get-together than do anything remotely cultural, edgy or 'improving'.

I feel like this makes me boring, and it just seems a shame that a job choice that works for me in many other ways has had this unwanted side effect, or maybe it's just my age? I'm 38. I don't have immediate plans to change my profession. I don't think that people think I am boring, because my social skills are good - I am a good listener and mostly when I'm talking to others it's about them, not myself.

Perhaps I need to shake this adolescent hang-up about being uncool but it's hard. I am a total square, and I am surrounded by very cool people all of the working day. How can I stop feeling like this? Maybe I just need help reframing the situation into something more positive.
posted by unicorn chaser to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (12 answers total) 14 users marked this as a favorite
 
It kind of just went away at 40 or so, for me. I do think you are in a life-transition phase and you will likely stop caring what your peers think of you pretty soon. They may still be doing cool stuff -- a lot of my peers do -- but it stops feeling like a judgment on your own choices. And also you will likely start realizing that the stuff you do do is interesting and worthwhile, and that anyone who thinks otherwise can stuff it. But there was not any grand event that happened that changed my mindset; it really was simply getting a couple years older and hitting a healthy attitude of Fuck It, This Is Who I Am, so Deal with It or Go Away.
posted by lazuli at 5:33 PM on July 6, 2019 [11 favorites]


Best answer: Sometimes when I'm stressed my mind tries to make up stories to explain why I feel so bad that when I think about it have no basis in reality. In those cases I think well something is bothering me, what is it really? If it's not that you want to change your activities, and it's not that you think other people are judging you, could this be something else going on? If you're brain is like "I am uncomfortable with this pace" or "I am uncomfortable with doing the same thing to exhaustion indefinitely" or "I seem to not be in sync with the activities of the rest of the nearby humans and that makes me very uncomfortable, like when we were little" or all of the above, and it's using an outdated metaphor to put it into words.

Point is, some introspection to figure out what you're actually uncomfortable about will probably help you know how to help yourself.
posted by bleep at 5:43 PM on July 6, 2019 [7 favorites]


I'd second lazuli, and also add that actually anyone who really owns what they like to do comes across as in some way cool. "I don't go to the cinema, doesn't do much for me, but I've spent my life photographing telegraph poles - I know, sounds ridiculous, right, but I love it!"
Likewise, I personally think of anyone with the energy and interest to organise any kind of get-togethers as kind of cool. I'm a bit lazy that way and both impressed by them and grateful for them. And think they're obviously cool enough that people want to go hang with them.
posted by penguin pie at 5:44 PM on July 6, 2019 [6 favorites]


Would it be possible for you to carve out an hour a week to do whatever hobby would make you feel more in touch with your aspirational self (so to speak)?

I live a very similar life as you and while I tend to embrace my squareness, I still leave room to say “yes” every few months to something that would be defined as “cool”. Visit a museum exhibit, take a day trip somewhere, try a new restaurant. I pick things that are up my alley, I’m not going to go waste an evening at some club for some band I couldn’t give a shit about.

There’s also something to be said for leaning into the dorkiness and doing things that are deliberately dorky. Visit the world’s largest whatever! Go find some shitty diner and take Instagram-worthy photos of your BLT. Announce your love for Nickelback. I would venture to say that everyone appreciates dorky things as much as “cool” things, and it can be freeing to just revel in it sometimes.
posted by Autumnheart at 6:08 PM on July 6, 2019 [5 favorites]


Self-talk ideas:
* I am living according to my priorities, investing in my career and relationships. If other people think that's boring, too bad.
* I'm investing my time and energy in my career and relationships, and I feel good about that.
* I'm grateful for my job, my family and my friends.

Side question:
Do you feel boring, or bored? Any chance you might be a little burnt out?
posted by bunderful at 6:29 PM on July 6, 2019 [1 favorite]


Do you miss your hobbies or are you worried about being boring, because absent any other issue, it's fine to be boring if you're happy. When I found out that I was autistic, not just an introvert, it freed me from socially-imposed sanctions, in my own head. I no longer worry about whether shaving my head for convenience (I'm a heterosexual woman) or wearing just two colours (black & white -my wardrobe is convenient) or wearing make-up and jewellery. I stopped going to parties (which was excrutiating) and I began to live by my values and interests. I still feel guilty sometimes for not fitting in with the norm, but so long as I meet my obligations, I tend to get over that pretty quickly.

I think being a good listener (I am too - colleagues come to my office uninvited when they need to chat) makes us interesting people (in fact, How to win friends and influence people makes a key point of that) and social enough. Someone else said, "people won't remember what you said, but they will never forget how you make them feel" and listening well gives another person a feeling of wellbeing that they may not find elsewhere, in a world filled with social media where people curate their best life moments as if these were every day events.

You do you. It's a fine way to live. Be the person you always were, before you were taught to pretend to be someone else. If you are content and well, it is a good life. But don't forget that your talent and compassion in listening already makes you a person people want to be with.
posted by b33j at 6:32 PM on July 6, 2019 [10 favorites]


"Now I feel I don't have anything." Based on everything you've written, you have a TON of things! It's just that your ton of things are all related to your job. It sounds like you have a job that you love and that seems to challenge, engage and interest you. Yes, this job seems to take up a lot of your time and energy, but it sounds worthwhile to you.

Sure, others might think you're a "square" for not doing X cool thing on the weekend in your free time, but I would encourage you to challenge that thinking. Your work is so cool that you get to do that cool thing (work), and guess what, you have the good fortune of getting paid for it while doing your cool thing, and the more you do your cool thing, the more you'll get better at it and be able to continue to do more and awesome cool work things in your career.

And the fact you have cool co-workers? Wow, what a blessing! Not only do you like what you do at work, you get to do it with cool people. You like listening, and so, you can hear about all their cool adventures that they go out and spend the energy/time/money to do, so you don't have to do that yourself.

So either the above is like totally not what you're actually trying to say -- and you actually don't like work that much in which case, that should be illuminating -- or you do, in which case you have the opportunity to reframe your relationship towards work and non-work. I think there's so much focus on the work "versus" life, but, if you are fine with the amount of "space" that work takes up with you, that's totally kickass, and what a ton of people would kill for to have in a job/career.
posted by ellerhodes at 6:52 PM on July 6, 2019


Best answer: Oh, I could write you an essay on this:

I'm going to go against the grain and suggest that the issue isn't you being a square so much as it is that you can't have work-life balance if you don't have a life, and you're beginning to feel the effects of that.

Coming from someone in a similar situation, I like my job. I'm also good at it. It's something I can nerd out about, I'm active in its related professional associations, and when I'm not at work I'm busy doing graduate studies in a related area. If I'm not careful, though, my job becomes the thing that provides the entirety of my social self-concept, which leads to feeling like a square as well as lacking opportunities to connect with people in ways that aren't about work. It's a really vicious cycle that's challenging to break.

One of the self-talk things I have to be really on top of is reminding myself that I'm not boring, but instead I'm bored because work can't be everything. The other thing I have to remind myself is that just because something has become habitual doesn't mean it makes me happy; not having a life because I allowed work to crowd it out wasn't a choice I made because I didn't want other things in my life.

You've said that your colleagues apparently find time to do non-work stuff, so does your job actually need to take up as much space in your life as it does? Something I had to be honest with myself about is that I was allowing my job to take on the properties of a gas that fills all available space. People who become "workaholics" don't necessarily get that way because they love their jobs above all else; it's usually because something else fundamental is missing from their lives that they can't easily access. When I stopped remembering how to be a version of Blergamot other than Work! Blergamot, it was just easier to have my life revolve around work, even though my job doesn't demand that of me.

It does sound like work takes up a lot of space for you that perhaps prevents you from investing in your other interests or building/maintaining connections with others. This isn't about doing "cool" scenester-y stuff, but it's difficult to spend truly mutually enjoyable time with others when you're all about work. Surely you can carve out time to invest in non-work things that you like to do, regardless of how cool they are. Being a good listener and living vicariously through stuff other people do doesn't go that far in solving your challenges, because it's not about stuff you want to do.

It's fine to be "boring" if you're happy that way, but you probably wouldn't be asking this question if you were.
posted by blerghamot at 8:38 PM on July 6, 2019 [21 favorites]


Best answer: It is possible that you are working too much, and that can be a problem, even if you like your job. (Never put all your eggs in one basket, etc.). But for what it's worth, that's not the impression I got: you exercise, you invest a lot of time into your relationships - sounds like a fine work-life balance to me.

To me you do sound like someone who spends their time wisely, in a way that generally enriches their life. You do a lot of things you enjoy and don't waste too much time on things you don't enjoy. That's obviously more important than meeting some nebulous notion of "cool" in the eyes of third parties, but I don't think that's really your issue here anyway. Your only problem is that you feel you don't have stories. And that wouldn't be a problem for many people - clearly it's possible to have a rich social life without being much of a story-teller; people seem to enjoy your company, you have good social skills, your friends and family wouldn't find you boring and deep down you probably know that - but it's a problem for you, because you are a writer. Who isn't currently writing much. You're feeling uninspired. You're bored with yourself. (Maybe I'm projecting. But it's a theory, so please bear with me for a moment).

It doesn't matter if writing is a big part of your identity, if you ever plan on being published. It's your way of being creative, and being creative is an important need for many people. Your job sounds intellectually demanding, but maybe it doesn't leave enough space for creativity. I think you might feel better if you got back into writing more. Maybe just to make yourself aware of how rich your life actually is. Writing, like traveling, can sharpen the eye for detail.
posted by sohalt at 1:30 AM on July 7, 2019 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: Thanks for the great perspective, all. I don't actually love my job, but it takes a lot out of me. So I think the answers above suggesting I am slightly burnt out are on to something. Have found all your words helpful and reassuring!
posted by unicorn chaser at 3:51 AM on July 7, 2019 [1 favorite]


People that read and invest time in other people, especially in staying in touch with family and friends, are a lot cooler than people that go to music or art shows. Seriously, you've got the right priorities.
posted by xammerboy at 8:21 AM on July 7, 2019 [1 favorite]


I relate to this so much; we can be squares together! I try to reframe it as being glad that I've found, through trial and error and my twenties and some of my thirties, a routine that works for me.

That's not to say that I always succeed with this framing! If you're like me, I bet the issue is that you have some dissatisfaction with your life as it is now rather than that you are actually boring/need to go to more concerts or whatever. I try to figure out what those underlying issues are when I feel grumpy that my friends are off doing "cool" things since usually I don't actually want to do those things. Is it because I wish they'd hang out with me more? Am I nostalgic for a time when I used to have the energy to do more stuff?

I recommend investing in connections with a wide range of people. For some friends I'm the old fart who they text about stuff when they're out on the town living the wild life. For others, I'm the cool youth who has all the adventures. (I feel totally boring so was astounded that a coworker once said they felt like I was always doing cool stuff. Things I do basically include: read, swim, try new restaurants and bars, bake.)

I also definitely agree with those who say that burnout might be a component. I liked the Nagoski sisters' book about burnout, which I think I first saw recommended on Mefi. If nothing else, I try to sleep more and feel less bad if I cry about stress after reading it!
posted by ferret branca at 9:05 AM on July 7, 2019


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