Freedom and Boredom: Striking a Balance

Has this ever happened to you?

You've just finished a Big project, and I mean a BIG, burdensome project that consumes all of your free time for weeks on end, and sometimes even consumes your sleeping, eating, and chore time, or if it doesn't, it makes you feel guilty for not allowing it to consume all of your free time. So then the moment when said BIG project is no longer on your plate, you feel like celebrating! You're suddenly free, like a bird, to do whatever it is that you've been wanting to do, or whatever it is that you have been doing instead, but now you can fully enjoy it without that little twinge of guilt for not focusing on the Big project instead.

So what do you do first? Maybe you go out with friends all night and celebrate, or you stare at the TV for hours just because you can. You might also do all those little chores that you'd been wanting to do, but couldn't because they weren't as important as the Big project. Maybe you even take a mid-day nap, because god knows, you needed one!

So a few hours later you're done celebrating, the little chores are caught up, you watched some TV, you just got up from your nap, and that "weeeeee, I'm free!" feeling is wearing off. Now what do you do to pass the time?!

This is roughly what happened to me today, and now I have this strange feeling, I think they call it boredom. I don't really feel like doing much of anything, yet in doing nothing, I'm wondering what I'm going to do to pass the time now that there is no Big project to fall back on as a time filler. To make it worse, I'm a bit sick with allergies or a cold. This means I've been working from home for the last two days, cooped up in my apt, and canceled the things I was originally going to be doing over the next several days in part because I don't want to potentially infect anyone, and in part because of a huge Harley Davidson rally (that's another story). So now I have this terribly ironic situation with all this free time, yet no one to spend it with, and not enough energy to start something new.

Then it occurred to me, "I could write a blog about this!" This seemed like the perfect mindless and energy-less activity to fill some time late on a Thursday night, right before I take more Benedryl that will make me sleepy again.

I got to thinking ahead to when I get some energy again. . . what else have I been meaning to do that I haven't done yet? I could hextr1p to give me the site graphics and help him make the new themes. That could be fun and productive. I also need to follow up with Malechi and remind him that we were going to tweak the site icons. Then there are the other blogs I've been meaning to write - a bird blog and part 4 of the site redesign story - but those would require more thought than I care to use right now.

So in conclusion, I'd like to know if other people react the same way after finishing a Big project? What do you usually do the moment you're free to do nothing? And then what do you do once you realize you've done all the things you care to do at the moment?