There were some things my siblings and I were not allowed to say growing up.
“Shut up”… Super banned
“I hate you”… You are definitely losing your dinner and getting cayenne pepper on the tongue
“I wish you had never been born”… This was the worst of all things to say. My mom told us that if we were ever caught saying this… she would put Tabasco sauce IN OUR EYES.
She swears she never said this but a child never forgets.
So those were the top three banned phrases in the Johnson household.
However, there was another word…
A word that was certainly not banned… but very VERY dangerous to use.
A word you would almost never catch me or my siblings using… EVER.
The word was: Bored
If you EVER said the word “bored” my mother could hear that word from 7000 miles away and would be next to you so fast with the fattest list of jobs to be done around the house.
Saying you were bored was a death sentence… the death of fun, of excitement, of anything that wasn’t hard labor.
Though we never said the word… it did not prevent us from being bored… constantly.
Many people seem to think that this feeling just goes away at some point. You become so busy and anxious and tired that you’re just never bored.
But adult boredom is the worst kind of all.
Childhood boredom is the lack of things to do.
But adult boredom is having too much to do and not wanting to do any of it.
Adult boredom is my mom’s list she gave us if she ever heard we were bored. It was all the things she knew she needed to do at some point but never had the time or energy to get to… so she would just wake up with these things haunting her day after day.
My name is Ari Johnson and I will admit that I sometimes suffer from adult boredom.
How is this possible? I live in NYC and work in the book world that always has a never-ending to-do list and when I’m not working I’m trying to go to all the museums, spend time with my books, and get enough sleep and protein to stay alive.
I don’t know how it’s possible. All I know is that sometimes I wake up and I just feel bored.
Of the schedule
Of the lists
Of the tasks
Of the responsibilities
Of the endless possibilities of things I could do
Sometimes I just get bored when I think about needing to sleep… like do I really have to engage in that behavior every single night?!?! It’s just boring after 25+ years.
The solution for adult boredom is to break up the monotony with something unexpected.
You have to surprise yourself when your life isn’t surprising you.
You have to become a more impulsive person.
So… Here are four (not the obvious five because we’re trying to mess with the way things are usually done) ideas for how to become a more impulsive person if you are currently too bored to come up with your own list.
- Buy a set of tiny hands on Amazon and start using them in your daily life.
You’re going out for dinner with friends? Bring a tiny hand or two and wear them the whole dinner.
You have to sit at a computer and work all day? Try typing with your tiny hands while your coworkers watch you in shock, fear, horror… and let’s be honest some jealousy that you are able to have fun and they aren’t.
You have to cook dinner? Use the tiny hand and take a photo to freak people out.
There’s something about the tiny hands that automatically makes your life more interesting because they are so freaking hilarious to use.
The best use of the tiny hands is for gasping. Decide that whenever the people around you say anything you are going to respond with shock and gasp behind a tiny hand. It’s the best thing you will ever do.
Pictured: Use of a fake hand at a play performance in Nauvoo Illinois circa 2022
Pictured: Set of mini hands being used to freak people out on camping trip circa 2022
Pictured: Mini hands being used late at night on the NYC Subway to ward off crazy people circa 2024
- Become obsessed with something nobody else is obsessed with that seems random and weird.
I’m not talking about making the “Roman Empire” your entire personality or becoming obsessed with Winston Churchill. Those are too predictable. It needs to be something super random. Here are some classics from my life.
- Legal battles between food restaurants in Utah. I have made it my personality to stand with the originator of restaurant ideas in the state of Utah. This means that I side with Cafe Rio over Costa Vida, Swig over Sodalicious, and Chip over Crumbl.
- Flossing. (the teeth kind) You can approach me anytime, anywhere and I will have flossers on my person. I went through a 15-year period of my life where I never flossed not even once. One day I said “enough of that” and I’ve been an avid flosser ever since. I even taught myself how to floss without using my hands so I could floss while also doing the dishes, driving, or writing a novel. I love flossing and I’m not ashamed to do it in public… except at the Opera or Ballet… that felt wrong.
- Memorizing random scenes from the hit Netflix show The Crown and trying to apply them constantly to every single situation I’m in. There is nothing as impulsive as responding to the question “How are you doing?” by busting out this quote from Prince Philip “I Philip Duke of Edinburgh do become your liegeman of life and limb and of eathly worship….etc” I can also do Winston Churchill’s radio speech after King Henry VI died… so when someone says “Tell me about yourself” I just start up with “I whose youth was passed in the August unchallenged, and the tranquil glories of the Victorian era may well feel a thrill invoking once more the prayer AND the anthem… God Save The Queen.” It’s so dramatic… so unexpected… and so British.
- Always talk like you’re a recovering addict.
You can say, “I like chocolate chip cookies”
Boring
Forgettable
Not interesting
However… “I’m Ari Johnson and I have a chocolate chip cookie addiction.”
Exciting
Dangerous
Impulsive
*be careful with this one because you could offend real-life addicts who have real-life addictions (although it never bothered my addict uncles…)
Make sure to read the room before attempting *see post about how to read the room that’s not written yet but will be coming out shortly.
- Pretend to be radically passionate about really normal things.
Someone says “I was walking to the bus and—”
You respond “WHAAAAT!!!” *pretend to choke you are in so much shock “Why would you walk when you could drive” You can also mix #1 and #4 here and use the tiny hands for gasping.
Someone says “In school today I—”
You respond “SCHOOL! Did I know you were in school?!?!?!?”
It’s such a random thing to do that it literally stops people in their tracks. Like people will be speechless for many minutes if you do this.
It’s just a fun way to add excitement to extremely normal conversations.
What’s fun about this exercise is that you get to change the energy, stir the pot, do something unexpected, and hopefully get people to laugh.
*This could lead to sarcasm so be careful.
This list might look like the musings of an insane person. In fact… now that I read it over again it kind of appears that way to me as well. This is probably in part due to the fact that I’m halfway through reading Crime and Punishment right now and sometimes my writing reflects what I’m reading.
HOWEVER… Adult boredom is no small thing… and getting out of it is going to require work, time, attention, and getting uncomfortable.
Or you could also just wake up and decide to do a day with tiny hands.
It can be as easy or as difficult as you want it to be.
But at least you won’t be bored anymore.