Mundane and Nonsense Time Wasters

Photo by Fredrik Öhlander on Unsplash

Hey friends. It’s Saturday night. Today, I visited my eldest son, tried a new-to-me bakery ( I bought two different sourdoughs and a cronut for me, a pie and vanilla slice for Tim), read in bed and swam with Blake. It’s nighttime now. Sadie has a friend sleeping over, and I‘ve tucked them into the sofa bed in the games room (it’s not a fancy room; it literally has an old sofa lounge, a TV and the PS5 in there) to watch Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. I bought McDonald’s for dinner because it’s fun to give the kids what they ask for, and I don’t have to cook or clean. Blake and I watched Mr Beast videos and an old episode of Big Bang Theory before he went to bed. And Tim is watching murder shows in bed. I now have GBBO on TV while writing to you. What an ordinary but nice Saturday.

I like ordinary life, and I like sharing it because I think we can sometimes believe everyone is living these extraordinary lives because of what we see online. And sure, I bet there are many people living lives full of exciting and amazing days, but I think most of us are doing the same stuff, day in, day out. Nothing wrong with that.

I was a bit sick this week, so my energy levels were low, and my attention span was scattered. Instead of using my spare time wisely in a way that makes me feel good or doing things that need doing, I mostly frittered it away, filling it with mundane and silly things. I thought maybe you’d like to read about them so that next time you feel like you should be doing more with your day, you can remember that we all waste time and not every moment needs to be productive or useful. And apparently, “brain rot” isn’t all bad, so let’s remember that too.

One way I love to waste time is watching “thrifting”, aka op-shopping or hair-cutting reels. This week, it has been predominantly American thrifting stuff. Their op-shops are WAY better than ours!!!! I love seeing what they buy and then how they style it. I find it very inspirational to see how creative people are with odd things because I am not creative at all!

Inspired by these reels, I created two lists on the Notes app on my phone. One is a list of all the things I would like to find second-hand this year. It’s a mix of furniture, clothes, shoes and books. The other is a list of op-shops. Some I visit often, others I’ve never visited. This is such a nonsense thing to do, but I enjoyed it.

I also enjoy looking through Depop and “hearting” things I like in the hopes the seller might send me a deal. It’s also good to “heart” things, so if you don’t have the money to spend now when you do have the money, you can go back and see if it’s still available. This week, I’ve been looking at loafers, skirts and what people are selling from the brand Ceres Life. I don’t NEED any of these things, but I enjoy searching and looking.

Something I do a lot when I can’t sleep is look at nail art on Pinterest. I think we all know I am becoming crackers about my nails, and I love passing the time looking at new ideas for my next nail appointment. Some nights I must be pinning in a different state of mind because the next time I look back at some of the things I’ve saved, I think, “What the fuck is this!?” I don’t know who I think I am at 10 pm at night, but it isn’t always the same person I am the day of my nail appointment.

Now, this next one might make me sound like a total fucking weirdo stalker, but I promise I’m not. I’m usually just bored and don’t have the headspace to read a book. What I do is look at the people I follow/subscribe to on Substack and see who they read. Is that weird? I figure that if I like what a person writes or shares, I might also like the people they like.

Remember when we could see what people we followed on Instagram liked and commented on? I liked that.

One of my favourite pastimes is to fall down a rabbit hole. This week while feeling crappy, I watched the entire season of The Nate and Jeremiah Home Show on 9Now. I loved Nate Burkus back when he was on The Oprah Show in the early 2000s, so watching him do a whole show with his VERY good looking and delightful husband sent me googling everything I could find out about them both. I read articles, looked at pictures of their homes (GORGEOUS!!!!), and scanned their Instagrams (Jeremiah is on the new season of Queer Eye). I’m a curious person, and I like to know all about people, so rabbit-holing is a fun way to waste time.

I have to be bored out of my brain before I turn to cleaning, but today, I cleaned the kitchen bin. All week, there was a smell wafting about any time someone opened the bin, but I ignored it because I am quite lazy when it comes to doing household chores. Until today, when I was SO bored, and the bin needed emptying, and I thought, “fuck it! I’ll hose the damn thing out!” SO mundane! SO boring!

Do you love it when your phone gives you a photo flashback? I do, and then I will happily waste time going back through more photos on my phone. Usually, I am looking at pictures of my kids and missing past versions of them. Often, I’ll send a photo to one of the big boys or my sister so we can reminisce together. I miss physical photo albums. I swear, one of these days, I will print hundreds of photos and put them in old school albums so my kids can pour over them the way I used to with the ones my nan had in the spare room wardrobe.

And, of course, I feed my boredom, too. Sometimes, having something to nibble on is a good way to fill time when you don’t know what else to do.

I’ve spent the last few years trying to untangle productivity from my self-worth, and part of that has been learning to be OK with so-called time-wasting. I know time is finite and that dicking around on the internet is not always great use of time or good for my mental health, but sometimes that is what I like doing. Some people might think writing a list of op-shops is dumb, but making silly little lists is a good time for me. Hell, you might have read this (or part of it if you got bored) and thought, “How boring. What a waste of time.” And you might be right. But I enjoyed the hour or so I spent writing here instead of reading my book. Cleaning the bins or the microwave because you're too bored or burnt out to do any of the other bigger things that need doing is so bloody mundane, but I think it does us good to remember that life is mostly mundane.

Are you a time waster? What do you do when you’re bored?

Talk soon xx