Boredom. Strange urge to distract oneself from feeling oneself

My senses are intermittently aware of what is happening. My mind associates what they sense with an image, sound or concept. It flickers through like this super quickly until I catch an association and engage with it further. Slowly I become more conscious of it. Then feelings, stories. Thought.

As I approach my 41st birthday this quote from Taleb stings - "A man without a heroic bent starts dying at the age of thirty".

I sometimes have a yearning to go deep, particularly after red wine 🍷. It's self indulgence - I think my inner truths and my insights are special. I remind myself that they aren't special - they are mundane and irrelevant. Snap. So true. It's all a bit silly now.

I sometimes seek indulgence. it's a feeling that I know is prompted by a longing or an absence. I know it won't satiate or fill the void. But in the moment it's tempting to say fuck it and pretend I deserve it

With my smartphone, I am tempted to avoid life in the present reality by finding something else, abstract and theoretical, to occupy and distract my mind.

Each time I do, I diminish the significance, rarity and uniqueness of my own lived experience - ignoring it and pushing it away.

I studied heaps of Ethics in philosophy and being over 40 - have some limited life experience to compare the theory to now.

Of ethical framework Buddhish-ism is the one that feels most true. Not in a belief sense (hense the "ish") but in describing real life and guiding to a better one.

I drink about four coffees a day—I think I’m trying to induce a sense of stress and excitement to overcome the monotony and mediocrity of my work routine.

It’s effective, which is why I keep doing it, I guess.

I've also found the similarities between ancient Greek philosophy, stoicism and buddhism interesting.

I think their common focus was directing rationale enquiry and reflection towards living well in the present life. Great to see they have similar conclusions.

Trying social media again after about 5+ years off.

Observation so far is I deliberately draw myself into having an opinion on things.

Mostly useless, unproductive opinions yet my instinct is to think they are valuable, unique and worth spending time on.

Fun and distracting though.