Getting out

The thing about writing is that you have to do stuff in order to have stuff to write about.  At least that's the concept.  And the truth is, I don't do much now.  I get the impression that I spend most of my time in a fluorescent cubicle hell, or driving a mundane car down a monotonous highway, or watching stale TV on my couch.  I grimly diagnose my life as early-onset humdrum.

That said, I actually do move around a lot, considering I'm a human slug choking on apathy.  I work for 8 hours each day and do a lot of reading and talking while there.  My commute is complicated and can contain some curious interactions with other drivers.  I play with my son for a bit in the evenings, and read books aloud to him for almost an hour each night.  And while Gina & I do watch TV habitually, in my spare time I also design board games, write poetry, read the whole internet, and chop firewood.  So I do stuff--I move around and stuff--and that's just on normal days.  I also host a lot of dinners and go to some kinda high-brow parties and play music on the weekends and generally keep quite busy.

But the thing is, I discredit a lot of my life as boring--because it's repetitive.  I-95 is, let's face it, always different but never notable.  Work is just work; any American will tell you that.  My son doesn't do much that's noteworthy, owing to being 3 months old.  I could talk about my hobbies, but that's just sad.  The parties and hosting and all of that--really just a fairly normal social life.  Nothing unusual.

What's amazing to me here is that my life has always been boring in this perspective.  Always.  I never was the most fascinating person, I never lived the most interesting life.  I went to school, and had some friends, and we talked about theology and video games and ate 5-in-the-morning Waffle House breakfasts after staying up all night laughing about things I can't remember.  And after school, I played in bands, I guess--but that was always more fuss than glamor.  Find a place to practice, play the same songs four hundred times, set up shows and bring the equipment--then two hours of stage time, but honestly if you have to pee halfway through it's not that great.  I guess I went to internships and conferences in DC and New York--but mostly, really, they were indoor PowerPoint presentations.  I didn't do anything interesting in the evenings.

But somehow, I had stuff to write about.  I wrung meaning from sidewalk strangers.  I turned over thoughts from overheard conversations and table talk.  I shouldn't have been interesting--but, inevitably, when I look back at what I wrote, I'm interested.

So then: does writing assign value to otherwise awfully mundane streaks of time?  Or were my conversations, my experiences, more interesting in years past?  Is a life, observed, simply more interesting than the same life, just lived?