Take Your “Boredom” Seriously, Friends

Boredom sounds like a privileged problem to have, but it can be insidious, because there's a fine line between boredom and depression, and it's not always easy to spot.

Right now, for example, I'm mostly just bored. That's OK. I find things to do. I read. I write. I go on long, contemplative walks with the dog. I joke that I'm living the life of a Russian aristocrat, except without the surplus wealth.

Last year was different. When my roommate would find me drinking and staring at the wall all weekend and ask me why I was doing that, I would tell him that it was because I was bored. That was how it felt to me. I felt "bored." Sometimes he would get frustrated with me and start listing all of the things I could do. Read. Write. Take long walks in the park. None of that interested me. I used to love it, but not anymore. Then he'd list out reasons my life was great. That mostly just irritated me, because I already knew I had a great job, and a great apartment, and great friends, and a great family, and knowing that mostly just made me feel spoiled and lazy and guilty on top of everything else.

So I started seeing a therapist, who told me I was depressed. I pushed back. "You don't understand," I said, "I'm not sad. I can't remember the last time I even cried. I just used to be really enthusiastic about life and, now, I feel nothing, all the time. Nothing excites me. Nothing feels meaningful. I can't find anything I want to do."

"Yea, that's what depression actually is," she said.

I'm writing this because I see/hear a lot of people not only feeling down but also feeling guilty about feeling down because they haven't lost their jobs or gotten covid or been as affected by the pandemic as others.

Depression doesn't need a reason. In fact, a lot of experts believe the reasons that we give for being depressed are just our brains rationalizing our emotions. There are always reasons to not be depressed. There are always reasons to be depressed. Even if your life is practically perfect, you can always fall back on the classic woe, which is that we're all going to die someday.

As with most things, my Russian side and my American side are at odds with one another regarding how to combat depression.

My Russian side is tenacious about never giving in to Despair, our constant enemy. You have to fight it by getting out of the house, doing some jumping jacks, watching a funny film. You can't let it win. It's not a bad system, and it works for me.

My American side tells me to just acknowledge it and wait for it to pass, as well as speak to a therapist. It tells me to not push myself too hard past my limits, to not beat myself up if I can't muster up the strength to do yoga, to reach out to a friend. This is also a good system, I think.

I usually settle for a mix of both. Whatever you do, I hope you find something that works for you. And as the weather gets colder and the prospect of a spike in cases starts to get you down, let's remember to stay safe outside but, also, to stay safe inside <3.

Men Need to Stop Doing This

There are probably a lot of things men should stop doing, especially when it comes to dating, but here’s one I hear women complain about a lot: treating them like they’re characters in a movie.

I get this a lot from guys myself, particularly ones who are kind of old-fashioned, where they sort of look at me as if to say, “Hmm, I thought you were a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, but now I’m wondering if you’re actually more of a Sexy But Evil Russian Spy” or “Hmm, I used to see you as a Confident Man-Eater, but now I’m wondering if you’re really more of a Lovable Mess.”

I usually respond by telling them that all of the above is true, on any given month, on any given week, and, sometimes even, on any given day. I have a side that’s compassionate. I have a side that’s sadistic. I have a smart side that can write an article in under 25 minutes and a stupid side that stubbornly pulls on a door that clearly says “Push.” I have moments when I feel extremely put-together and moments when I feel utterly broken. All of these things are real and they all coexist, because I am a human being, like you, and not a character in a Hemingway novel.

I say Hemingway, because he and Fitzgerald are famous for not being able to write women. Their women are always paper-thin, most often a Beautiful Tragedy whose only purpose is to be Beautifully Tragic and somehow mess up the lead hero’s life. It should go without saying that real women are more complicated than that. It should go without saying, but, with some men, it doesn’t.

Women are partially to blame for all of the confusion, of course. When I was growing up, I was taught that you have to put on a bit of a performance as a woman in order to “snag” a man. “No one wants to see what’s going on behind the curtain,” my mother, a stage performer, used to say. Or she’d say, “You shouldn’t yell in front of him...,” a piece of advice that always felt like it should be followed up with, “that’s not what he’s paying for.”

I used to be really great at sussing out exactly what character a guy was looking for and delivering just that. This one’s looking for a free spirit who is going to breathe fresh air into his monotonous existence, kind of like Penny in Almost Famous. This one wants a Feisty Russian Woman who is going to give him a hard time about everything, thereby presumably making him better. This one says he doesn’t want a Drama Queen, but he definitely wants me to storm out so he can chase me down the street romantically bellowing “Baby, I’m sorry!”

I’m still pretty good at this. I just don’t want to do it anymore.

About a year ago, a guy told me that I was “insincere” and asked me to be “more sincere” with him, so I tried it out, just to see what would happen. I was a little disappointed to find that he was just as confused as I expected him to be, and dead set on figuring out which Diana was “the Real Diana” instead of accepting the fact that I, like him, am a multi-faceted human being.

It reminded me of what a friend of mine said when she complained that “men tell you that they want you to let your guard down, but they just want to want you to let your guard down; it’s like one ongoing challenge, and they don’t always like what they see when if you do.” Another friend of mine said, “Guys tell you they want to get to know the real you, but all that means is that they want the act to be real, and that’s not possible.” It’s like when an ex of mine was all grouchy about the fact that I didn’t finish, and when I asked him whether or not he would have preferred me to fake it, his silence spoke volumes.

Personally, I don’t actually think it’s that much of an issue for men to continue to want to date women who put on a performance. But then they can’t turn around and complain, as so many do, that once the relationship was over they realized that the woman they were with wasn’t who they thought they were. “Of course not,” I usually say, “She never felt comfortable enough to take her makeup off.”

  This is not adulthood

Here’s something that might help ease your anxiety, because it helps me. Nobody knows what the fuck they're doing. It's not just you.

 I say this because, as a kid, you're conditioned to think that, one magical day, you will be an adult and it's all going to come together and suddenly make sense. This will never happen and that's OK.

 I used to resent this, but I now appreciate my parents' candor when I used to ask them for advice as a child and they essentially said, "Fuck if I know. You think just because I'm a grown-up means I know more stuff than you do? Go ask Tolstoy." So I did, and more often than not, he didn't know either.

 I find it helpful to accept this general state of constant unknowing in order to avoid inaction. It's good to look at things from a variety of perspectives. But intelligent people know that a valid case can be made for any argument. I have a friend who’s a lawyer who struggles with inaction, and I think a large part of that is because he’s particularly attune to the fact that it’s not about who’s “right” or “wrong;” it’s about using the facts that you have in order to spin the story your way. 

 This can be a problem when it comes to making decisions. On one hand, you hate your boss and you’re no longer inspired by the work you’re doing. On the other hand, you do enjoy the work itself and it’s a good paycheck. Should you leave? On one hand, the way your boyfriend chews makes you want to stab him in the face, which is probably not a good sign. On the other hand, he makes excellent burritos. Should you break up? This is how people get stuck. If you’re anything like me, when you’re unhappy, you just start to act like a dick in the hope that the other person will leave you, then marvel at how little self-respect some people have as they allow you to stay, which is obviously neither a kind nor mature thing to do. 

 But there’s one thing that I did in my 20s that I have lost and am trying to get back: I let my gut make decisions. If I wanted to move to China, I moved to China. If I wanted to write a book, I wrote a book. If I wanted to have a passionate romance that I knew would end with both of us crying on a train platform saying, “We’ll always have Marrakech,” I did. And I got a lot of admiration for how much I traveled, how much I wrote, how many wild flings I had. 

 Over the last year, whenever I tell people how I feel about my life, how I feel lost and drained and unfulfilled and constantly being forced to do things that I don’t want to do, they smile and clink their glass and say, “Welcome to adulthood,” like I’m now part of some sad club that I had been lucky enough to avoid in the past. 

 Here’s the thing: I don’t think that it is. I always paid my own way; I wasn’t hopscotching around Europe on daddy’s dime. But I made bold decisions. I lived dangerously. I didn’t weigh the pros and cons or ask other people for advice or opinions. If I got an idea into my head and it felt right, I just did it. That doesn’t mean I just did whatever I wanted all the time. On the contrary, there are quite a few men in the world that I haven’t slept with because my gut said the repercussions outweighed the reward. But I followed my instincts, and it served me well. 

I started going to therapy for the first time ever last year, and I found it interesting that so much of what my therapist kept trying to do was get me out of this mindset that there are all of these things that I “have” to do.

 “I wish I could just quit my job and move to a cottage in England and write by the fire,” I’d whine. 

 “Then do it,” she’d reply, with a knowing smile. 

 “I can’t! I’ve got a dog and bills to pay,” I’d fire back, wondering when I’d somehow turned into George Bailey from It’s a Wonderful Life. But I knew that she was right, and that 25-year-old Diana would have said “Fuck it” with the knowledge that I could have a dog and bills to pay at another job, in another country, in another life. 

 When we’re kids, all of our decisions are made for us, so we really are forced to do things we don’t want to do. We have to go to math class, otherwise, we’ll fail. We get thrown into a car and told we’re being taken to ballet class or swimming practice. We are force-fed vegetables or, in my case, buckwheat mush. I think that, once we grow up, it takes a while to snap out of that mindset, and some of us never do. Many of us just transfer that parental role to someone else, most often a boss or a spouse. And if you’ve ever heard someone whine, “My wife made me…” you know how childish it sounds. 

 Oftentimes, the people who come across as powerful people are those that seem to have broken out of that, the ones who seem to make their own decisions, take charge of their own lives, and are never really “forced” into anything. They’re the ones who come across as adult-like, and, in addition to being admirable, it’s also kind of hot. 

 I got fired during the pandemic, and a month in, it feels like the best thing to have happened to me in the last two years. I was comfortable but bored and stagnated. I lamented to people about how much I missed being a freelancer, how I used to turn to my dog every morning and say, “What are we going to do with this big, beautiful day?” I constantly felt like I was being forced to do things that I didn’t want to do, that I had somehow slipped into a form of intellectual prostitution that I had worked so hard to avoid. 

 I feel happier now and more fulfilled, generally, in spite of not knowing how I’m going to make my rent. I told my friend recently that I feel like I’m 25 again. 

 “Young and fresh?” she asked. 

 “No, broke but full of promise,” I replied. We laughed. 

 Because, with all of the awfulness and anxiety that’s going on, I can say at least one good thing again: I turn to my dog every morning, and I say “What are we going to do with this big, beautiful day?”