Don’t Fight the Boredom

“I’m definitely feeling the boredom,” says Dana Attari, who’s been in isolation with her fiancé in California for, well, about as long as the rest of us have been sheltering in place alone or with our own partners or kids or roommates or animals. My friend Emma Karin Ericsson, who lives alone in New York City, lately refers to herself as the “estranged aunt” of the pigeons nesting on her windowsill. It’s been long enough that time has begun to feel elastic, and wild birds have become family, and many of us have experienced what Dana describes as “the discomfort of facing too much of myself.”

It’s a common yet startling paradox that the eras we classify as “interesting times” published in Italy at the end of March, after the populace had been sheltering in place for about a month, people named boredom as one of the most difficult aspects of their prolonged isolation, second only to lack of freedom.