Stand #49—-On Enduring The Ennui
Wednesday, January 15th, 2014
“The problem with romantic notions is the notions part. Notions are fleeting; they go away.”
—-Richard Schmitt’s “Sometimes a Romantic Notion”—-The Best American Essays 2013
Eight years ago, I learned exactly why I am bored right now with this writing project.
I had just turned 23 and a school in Wisconsin had decided to take a chance on a young teacher who had decided to major in English just months before arriving at the school’s doorsteps ready to change lives…in some abstract, completely pedagogically unsound way. After somehow making it through my first year without getting fired for complete incompetence and lack of general knowledge pertaining to anything having to do with English, the school asked its employees to take an online personality test consisting of approximately 100 multiple choice questions. Just minutes after receiving the email asking us to take the test at our earliest convenience, I rushed to my computer in an attempt to win. Now, I am not quite surewhat I would have won, or why I would have won, but I sure as hell knew that if someone was going to win this test, it was going to be me.
Maybe it was because I kept trying to click ahead to the next question before the timer had expired, or maybe it was because the test was just that good, but even after just a few brief questions, the test seemed to recognize exactly who I was at heart: Relax, dumbass. You already know you’re a competitive dick. We don’t need to tell you that again. I figured the test would be good, but I didn’t realize that it would be able to see into the depths of my soul.Congratulations, Computer. You win this round. And it won the next round too by telling me that I couldn’t even have immediate access to my results; apparently, it also knew that I lacked patience. I would have to wait two more weeks just to see why I didn’t like the people in my office whom I didn’t like. I was waiting for the next note to pop-up: they don’t like you either.
A few weeks later, to celebrate the completion of the academic year, our faculty embarked on a weekend retreat to a local resort. Simply gorgeous accommodations. (Note to my current employer who shall not be named for legal purposes: retreats are so much more effective, or at the very least more fun, when we actually leave the campus and go to country clubs for the weekend instead of just gathering in a classroom during summer vacation and calling it a retreat.) The idea behind the retreat seemed simple enough: enjoy a few days away from the school with colleagues, get the results to our personality tests, and reflect upon a glorious year of rigorous, intellectual pursuit. (Yes, just moments later, I will find out that I am prone to bullshit as well.) But what actually happened that weekend seemed far more complex. Joking aside, that test seemed to infiltrate the depths of my very being.
After sifting through nearly twenty pages of results, I noticed a pattern:
Page 1: You love starting new projects, but you hate finishing them.
Page 2: You hate finishing projects, but you love starting new ones.
Page 3: You get bored with projects after your initial romantic notions go away.
Page 4: Remember that time you didn’t finish that project? Exactly.
Page 5: You are probably already bored of reading these results. Take a new personality test.
Page 6: Are you still reading this? If so, we might have been wrong about the initial results.
I stopped reading. I was tremendously bored. And I am tremendously bored with writing two essays a week that seem to be going nowhere. Seems, Madam? Nay, it is going nowhere. Sure, the occasional piece hits home with a few readers, and I find some inspiration knowing that I can produce a line or two that will eventually fall into a cohesive rhythm. But the ennui is setting in, and it’s telling me that the notions are indeed just notions. The honey-moon period is over, and we are in this thing for the long haul. Some of you are still here, but I wonder when you’ll leave. Because at some point, the bored writer writes boring writing. And I fear that I am on the verge of losing that zest that flavored the pursuit in its early stages. I think I understand why those who finish the Appalachian Trail seem to experience complete triumph followed by complete emptiness: what next?
The notions are gone; the romance is gone; it’s time to grind. And this is why I choose to continue. Grace under pressure. I want to prove that the personality test was simply wrong. I want to win. Even if it ends up being me competing against a computer that will never know I’ve actually completed a project. The race is long, and in the end, it’s only with myself.
