Bored

Bored. In this day and age we shouldn't be able to be bored, yet somehow I've recently managed to find myself incredibly bored. I go to lab (work for us grad students), hit the gym for an hour or so, then head home and. . . nothing. When pressed to come up with something to do my ideas go so far as playing pool or going to a movie. If I'm not totally wiped a hike is easy and fun, but after the gym my knee can't often handle that well. I used to be perfectly content watching TV for hours on end, but I can't do that anymore without feeling lazy and disgusting. I end up playing games on my computer to multitask and feel less like a waste of oxygen.

I don't like the feeling of bored; it's unsettlingly foreign to me. It's ironic because it's the same as the life I lived before moving to Utah, but I'm now so much more active and social and that makes me want to be doing something. Especially around people. It shows how transformative grad school has been for me, that I enjoy going out, having a cold beer or two, and chatting with strangers. There are some seriously neat people here in Salt Lake to talk to; some weird ones too, but there's always going to be a few I guess. But bored creeps back, because you can't go to the bar every night. It's fiscally and physically irresponsible. 

What do you do? I practice my flute, I've finally cracked open my new sketch book, I'm considering trying to write a novel. I need to keep myself engaged, keep my mind busy as well as my body. Supposedly I'm going to start playing tennis with a friend. Hopefully bored will be a passing sensation; school kept me busy, but now that there's no homework (I read enough in lab, I don't want to spend my down time reading a ton more about science) I need to find something else to occupy me. 

Plus I'm almost done with Breaking Bad.