This Week

I liked the article that was in the newspaper the other day about boredom. Apparently, we are so unable to, what would you call it, tolerate even a few seconds of boredom that there is a new term for it, micro boredoms. We are getting to the stage where we can’t even tolerate a few minutes, a few moments, with nothing to do, without feeling the need to fill it with internet, Facebook, smart phones, etc. These are distractions from boredom not even fixes, so we actually remain bored, although we fool ourselves into thinking the opposite.

The article says don't try and fill those unproductive moments with social media and the like, just feel the feeling of feeling bored, as it may help with creativity. Boredom may allow space for thought, memory and introspection, and it is believed to be a necessary element in creativity as well as a spur for new ideas and fresh ways of seeing things. Some even believe boredom helps us put our lives into perspective. 

So, no Facebook and no Youtube and no news online, no playing with your smart phone. Have you noticed lately, that when you walk into a waiting room, or some sort of public space where people gather, everybody will be glued to their smart phone, like we all need to be constantly tuned into something. I have noticed it. 

When we should just sit and wait and feel the vibrations and see what creativity comes, what enlightenment dawns on us. It makes sense, we need the silences for the answers to come to us. 


It got me thinking, that on my days off I get up in the morning and I switch on the internet news and I read Facebook and a few blogs and then suddenly it is mid afternoon.

So, this morning, I read the news for ten minutes while I ate my muesli and drank my coffee and then I switched it off. Then I sat back and stared at my wall paper.

I wrote a story about my old boss being attacked in an alley by a man in a black hoodie.

It was pure revenge, nothing more.

I guess the creativity has to get passed recrimination before I can show it to anyone. Oh, what the hell, the bitch fucked up my life, well, financially. I wanted it to be shocking and it is. I think we sensor ourselves too much and we don’t write terrible things, so I did. Shrug. I just wrote it straight out. I’m going to try and write some more. I am just going to try and write basic short stories too get myself writing again.

But then my sister called me and wanted me to go to Albert Park to pick something up for her as a favour. Apparently, the two bitch daughters wouldn’t go and pick it up for her.

I told the people at work this week that I was gay. I said it, where normally I’d hesitate if it came up and, usually, the moment would pass. Gone.

Just relax? Don’t hesitate, just let it loose.

I guess that is, pretty much, true, but it sounds funny when I read it out loud. You know, what you do when you don’t even realise you are doing it. 

It kind of comes out of the fight for gay marriage stuff, which I kind of think is just an extension of the new conservative paradigm. I guess that doesn’t really make sense. It came from thinking what we could all do, what I could do instead of going down the already failed route of marriage to bolster equality. It seemed kind of simple in the end. If we all just tell the next person that we are gay and are not afraid we’d get a lot further down the world enlightenment tunnel than just a piece of paper stating that it is legal.

Oh, I don’t care if people get married. I can understand what those wanting to get married think it will do for them. Equality. Acceptance. …divorce. But, it has been kind of going through my mind, what I do that doesn’t extend the cause? 

But isn’t marriage only really going to benefit middle class, dare I say, western gays?

Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t been closeted for all of this time. No. I’ve always been out at work, at permanent jobs. I’ve always been out to my family, well, for a long time. I have always been out to my friends, of course.

I’m talking about those moments with strangers when we don’t say we’re gay, when we don’t say we have a boyfriend instead of a wife. You know those inconsequential moments when we let it pass, when we let it go uncorrected.

I’m thinking about the many and varied people I am working with at the moment, specifically, as I am doing many more introductions, but the same could go for the lady in the TattsLotto agent, or the man behind the bakery counter.

I told Dandenong Alice that I ate a lot of Asian food with my partner. Later, when we were talking about her friends who’d had kids who now regretted it, saying that if they knew then what they know now they may not have them again, she asked how old my partner was. I said how old Sam is but then I added, but he is a he and not a she.

“What?” she said.

“He is a he.”

“Oh,” she said.

Later we talked about Sam and going to Vietnam.

Southbank Malcolm asked me where I got my Nike band from I told him my boyfriend bought it for me.

I think Southbank guy is gay too.

When I was discussing with Bourke Street Derwood that our passports had gone missing, at the post office, I told him that I told my boyfriend that we’d never see the two documents again.

He laughed. I reckon Bourke Street Derwood is gay too.

I guess that doesn’t sound like much, but usually I’d shy away from saying such things to strangers. I’d just let it go normally. And then Tom’s words came into my head. “You know that you travel through life and the people you meet probably don’t even know you are gay.” I become invisible as a gay man, almost unintentionally. Shrug. What does it matter? But, I guess it does matter.