Step 47: The Art of Boredom

Summer vacation is a great thing in a teacher's life, but also a very complicated thing. I went from working anywhere from 60-80 hours a week (I had two jobs, P.F. Chang's and teaching) to working 20-30 hours a week. This week, I have Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday off from work! That's a lot of time on a girl's hands whose life has solely consisted of work for the past year. But, with a little planning, those days fly by. In order to fill worthless days of nothing, follow these easy steps:

1. Sleep late. Even though your body wants to get up at 7:30 or 8 am, don't let it. The longer you can force your body to linger in bed, the less hours you have to find things to do during the day.

2. Take your time getting ready. There's no rush when time doesn't exist for you. Try everything in your closet on until you look perfect. Listen to music while getting ready. Put on a full face of make-up. Kill as much time as possible in this stage.

3. Think of all of the potential things you could do during the day. And then make sure you space them out. You don't want to do it all at once in the morning. No, no, no. Get your eyebrows waxed in the morning. Take a break. Go to the book store. Take a break. Eat lunch. Take a break. Space out your errands to maximize time wasting.

4. Only drive scenic routes. Drive the back roads that take an extra few minutes to get wherever you are going. You may even see something new. You can learn and waste time!

5. Call everyone you know. Talking on the phone is a great waste of time. And if you call everyone you know, someone is bound to answer.

6. Watch all the movies that your boyfriends never wanted to watch with you. You know, all the Jane Austen's and episodes of Glee that you can never con anyone into seeing with you.

7. Read. Reading should be thrown in throughout the day. In step three's "breaks," reading is an excellent option. It fills time and makes you smart.

8. Wander the mall. Who knows, maybe you need something.

9. Eat your favorites. Drive to the next town over to get your favorite take-out or make a special trip to the grocery store to cook something delicious. Dinner can take six hours if you want. The longer the better.

10. Clean your house. This is the hardest part in the art of being bored. But if your house is messy like mine, and you are bored everyday like me, and never clean your house even though you are bored like me, then you will just feel bad about yourself. You have to turn off Netflix, and do the laundry and dishes. It will feel better in the long run.

Step 46: You Can't Have It All

Even though we always want it, we can't have it all; it's just not possible. And as soon as you think you're close, you'll end up with nothing. However, in these situations, nothing can be the best thing for you. Sometimes you need the universe to spit in your face, tell you that you cannot have your cake and eat it too, and then wipe your slate clean in order to really see how unfair it was to try to have more than your share of anything. But good things do still happen and will happen again to you, but maybe slowly at first. And the best part of the whole process is that we get know ourselves more completely.

Hello, New Day.