GUEST POST from Arlen Meyers

There are endless articles celebrating the joys of boredom and its potential to stimulate creativity. But what about being not just being bored, but being a boring person?

Here is the A list of boring celebrities.

The American celebrity and attention grabbing headline culture is all about being interesting, however you define that. But, being interesting comes with its problems:

1. Its hard work and often expensive looking that way and doing all those things that you can talk about at cocktail parties or Meetups. All that botox, eyelashes, makeup and hairdos add up.
2. There are very few people in history who were able to excel at and be famous for more than one thing. Some are just famous for one thing they said. Take Thoureau for example…quiet desperation. Can you imagine spending the night with him on Waldon Pond?
3. Most people try to fake it till they make it and often come off as imposters or frauds. In fact, most celebrities are pretty boring. Famous for being famous, in popular culture terminology, refers to someone who attains celebrity status for no particular identifiable reason, or who achieves fame through association with a celebrity. The term is a pejorative, suggesting that the individual has no particular talents or abilities.
4. Keeping up with the Jones’s is so post war 50’s
5. Being good at one thing, or creating one product or company requires intense focus, not suffering from the distraction of traction.
6. Being unidimensional does not mean you don’t need a hobby or distraction now and then. I mean, how interesting is the fact that you can play amateur piano?
7. Being boring helps to separate your true friends who like that you are boring from false ones who are really after something else.
8. Being boring relieves you of any obligation to answer, “So, what are you doing interesting lately?” Then you can listen to other person, which was the point of the question in the first place. You also don’t have to lie to an interviewer who asks which books are on your night stand when you have none or haven’t touched the ones that are there as a support for you EchoDot.
9. When you tell someone you just returned from a trip and they ask what you did, you can answer “As little as possible. I just went to chill” It’s another way to detox from life
10. The vast majority of the world’s population live at the bottom rung of the hierarchy of needs. They are worried about survival, food, clothing and shelter, not being interesting or self actualization. Turns out, most of their stories and lives are much more interesting than mine.

If you pay attention, everyone is a novel. The most boring person, if you sit down and really listen, is someone interesting

Instead of trying so hard, celebrate your being boring. People will find you much more interesting than all the phonies trying to be interesting.

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