I'm bored, really, really, really bored:
According to an article published in the journal Motivation and Emotion, there are five types of boredom—which is one more than the research team expected to identify. The boredom varieties range from a calm and pleasant experience to something more like depression.
The research team, led by Thomas Goetz of the University of Konstanz and the Thurgau University of Teacher Education in Konstanz, Germany, collected real-time data from university and high-school students multiple times a day over a two-week period. They found that boredom is not only widespread—every student in the study experienced some level of boredom—but it's also more common than other emotions. "Boredom is the most often and most intense emotion experienced by students," wrote Goetz in an email, "much more intense than enjoyment, anxiety or anger."
The newly discovered form is "apathetic boredom," which is so far ahead of "indifferent boredom" that it's close to a form of depression. Now, that's just sad.
Personally, I don't mind being bored. It's sort of a nice companion for laziness. One form of boredom-- "searching boredom" -- has probably led to more creativity and technological breakthroughs than we realize. Many of the world's improvements are made by people who are bored enough to go on the look for something more interesting.
One of my favorite characters in literature is Dunbar in "Catch 22," who is terrified of dying and spends every waking minute actively trying to be bored because it makes life seem so much longer. Smart man.
