Fairly soon after I stopped drinking, I found myself getting bored especially in the evenings (you know, wine-o’clock). If I had cravings, they were short lived and I got past that pretty quickly. I mentioned in an earlier post, I really discovered how much I treated my drinking like a habit, literally thinking “okay, now I just need to poor myself some wine”, and then almost immediately, “oh, that’s right, I’m not drinking”.

A couple weeks into it, that’s when the boredom set in. It made me uneasy. Thinking, I really should be doing something constructive with my time. I learned some interesting things about boredom. That it is actually a good thing (or it can be). That when we are bored, that is when we can become very creative. If you think about it, many of our amenities of modern day living, may have come from the inventors being bored!! I’ve heard that Albert Einstein was bored a lot!

I consider myself a fairly creative person. I have done a bit of art, I play the piano, I sew, I bake. I remember being bored a lot as a kid, and I would go up to my dad and say “I’m bored!” He’d give me this long, drawn out story about how to go sit in a corner and twiddle my thumbs. I’d want to kill him for that!!

But as I got older, and especially because of my drinking, I didn’t partake a lot in the creative activities I once loved. So, finding out that I could use boredom to work FOR me, that uneasiness I felt started to go away and I then started getting active again with creativity.

I found myself reading a ton. I’ve always found that reading relaxes me and helps me fall asleep. When I was still drinking, I would read in bed, fall asleep reading, clocking myself in my head with the book or my phone, startling me awake. The next day, I’d have to go back over the chapter I just read because reading it the night before (with one eye open), didn’t really sink in (imagine that). Now, I’m reading every second I get. Sometimes I’m reading 2 books a time.

Exercising is such a part of my life now. I used to hate working out in the mornings, claiming it would make me sweaty, just yucky feeling all day. But, really, the reason was because if I postponed it to do it in the evening, say when I got off work, I’d always have an excuse NOT to do it. I mean, I’d have a long day at work, instead of exercise, let’s have some wine to relax!!! Today, I have the energy at the end of the day (also I’ll exercise in the mornings if time allows) to exercise after work. I have found there are so many hours in the evening to get things done now! Who’dda thunk?? I have the energy, the fortitude, and just the old-fashioned want to! And, I think, it has a lot to do with me not wanting to be bored!

Embrace boredom!! Whenever boredom sets in, I ask myself why. In the past, I’d just reach for the wine and there went all my curiosity and energy. Just sitting there numbing everything in my world around me. Not anymore. And, honestly, I rarely get bored these days. I’m fulfilled and complete.