What bores me?
This question.
There. Post over. See you tomorrow.
But no — apparently we’re going to unpack this like it’s a suitcase at airport security. “Sir, we’re going to need you to elaborate on your boredom.” Fine. Let’s do this.
What bores me?
Vague questions bore me. Questions that feel like they were generated by a committee of beige office furniture. Questions that sound like they were written by someone who thought, “Let’s spark creativity!” and then immediately fell asleep on their keyboard.
“What bores you?” is the oatmeal of prompts. No toppings. No brown sugar. Just lukewarm paste sitting in a bowl of obligation.
I don’t get bored easily when something matters. Give me a great story. A heated debate about whether 100 proof is the true sweet spot of bourbon. A Friday night football game with a controversial pass interference call. A classroom full of 9th graders discovering that Shakespeare is basically just dramatic teenagers with better vocabulary. I’m in.
But ask me what bores me and suddenly my brain turns into an old Windows computer trying to load Internet Explorer.
Thinking… thinking… not responding.
Part of it is that boredom is situational. I can sit quietly in an empty classroom after school — my favorite quiet time of day — and be perfectly content. Silence doesn’t bore me. Repetition without purpose bores me. Meetings that could have been emails bore me. Emails that could have been two sentences bore me even more.
Small talk that never graduates into real talk? Boring.
Endless PowerPoints with bullet points reading themselves aloud? Boring.
People who ask “How are you?” but don’t actually want the answer? Boring.
But here’s the twist: sometimes boredom is just misdirected energy. My brain is rarely idle. It’s plotting the next blog post, next book idea, next classroom activity, next bracket matchup. It’s asking, “What if Santa Claus were actually running an international intelligence network?” or “What if two boys drowned in a West Texas cave and nobody ever told the whole story?” That’s not boredom. That’s gasoline.
Which is why this question feels like someone handed me a teaspoon and asked me to measure the ocean.
If I’m honest, what truly bores me isn’t a specific activity. It’s the absence of curiosity. It’s when people stop asking “Why?” and settle for “Meh.” It’s when creativity gets replaced by autopilot.
Give me passion. Give me absurdity. Give me something that makes me argue, laugh, taste, teach, or write. But don’t hand me a question so bland that it needs seasoning just to survive.
So what bores me?
Questions like this. And yet — here I am, 600 words later, still talking about it. Which means maybe the real answer is this:
Boredom doesn’t stand a chance if I decide to fight back.
Now, tomorrow’s question better be better.
Copyright © 2026 Doug DeBolt.
