The treadmill

I am bored witless.  I don’t know quite how I got this way, but I’ve just realised I’ve been doing it all my life.  Oh, I never have nothing to do.  That’s the problem.  I can always see a hundred things that need doing, and I even have quite a number of them recorded on my to-do list.  And every day I do whatever seems most pressing or least boring, and whenever that seems unsatisfying, I work even harder in the hopes that some day everything that needed doing will be done, and I’ll be free to do something wonderful. 

And when I’m in good health and good spirits, that adds up to something of a manic phase, a frenzy of activity until three in the mornings, barely able to sleep, until something gives way and it all crashes down.  Usually that crashing down comes in the form of illness or depression, something that leaves me staring at the walls for a week or few, leaving the dishes piling up in the sink and the vegetables rotting in the fridge, the to-do list untouched until, with a flexing of determination, I get back to work and the cycle begins anew. 

Oh, I imagine I enjoy some of the chores and errands I set for myself.  Little improvements in this and that.  Maintenance of house and body.  It seems I’m only doing what’s necessary.  Then reading the Sunday paper and watching documentaries seems a neccessity for retaining one’s membership in society; keeping one’s finger on the pulse of a culture glimpsed only through an LCD screen.  Then add reading list email, upgrading software, buying a new swimsuit. 

It bores me, but it all seems necessary.  I don’t know what I can cut from my life.  It reminds me of high school all over again, staring into nowhere while the textbooks sit unread all evening in front of me.  Unable to finish, unable to quit.