When you have evenings alone, how do you spend your time?

[NaturaNaturans]

I am looking for some inspiration. I often turn to enterainment or video games, but I dont find it very fufilling, so what do you like to do?

[Keith108]

Read, sit (meditation, zazen, whatever you do), go for a walk. Boredom is highly underrated. 🙏

[NaturaNaturans]

6 minutes ago, Keith108 said:

Boredom is highly underrated.

How so?

[Keith108]

4 minutes ago, NaturaNaturans said:

How so?

I can only speak for myself, but I value silence and the opportunity to not have to stay busy.  

[NaturaNaturans]

I find boredom soul crushing tbh, think it is related to my adhd

[Kojiro]

if you want to grow solitude is helpful, maybe even necessary at some point. almost all great geniuses have been lonely people, this give you the freedom to do interesting things, like reading, working on yourself or some project, etc.

[Keith108]

4 minutes ago, NaturaNaturans said:

I find boredom soul crushing tbh, think it is related to my adhd

Interesting, sorry to hear about the adhd. I like to use the word rhythm, instead of boredom. If a rhythm can be found, like a heart beat, or the sun coming up everyday, then there is no boredom. For sure, it’s different for everyone. 🙏

[NaturaNaturans]

Just now, Keith108 said:

Interesting, sorry to hear about the adhd. I like to use the word rhythm, instead of boredom. If a rhythm can be found, like a heart beat, or the sun coming up everyday, then there is no boredom. For sure, it’s different for everyone. 🙏

I understand, I get in that zone sometimes, and you are absolutley right: it is wonderfull, healing and no boredom anywhere.

[Taomeow]

It's sort of seasonal.  In winter, it's usually small semi-creative menial projects always accompanied by a good audiobook.  Mostly womanly things (that's projects, not audiobooks, which I like filled with action, doom and violence -- yang stuff to balance a yin pastime).  A sashiko (Japanese mending/decoration technique) jeans experiment goes well with a Japanese novel, or knitting a scarf, with a Russian one.  A hot toddy on the side table, cat by my side.  I might sketch the cat in the surrealistic style (don't have the skill to make it realistic, but I might incorporate an image from my audiobook to draw a cat wearing a military uniform or piloting a space ship or eating a zombie.)      

[snowymountains]

I stay at the bed with open eyes in open awareness or stay outdoors looking at water, again in so-called open awareness.

I've been doing it since childhood, before I begun formal meditation sessions, didn't even know that this is a form of meditation.

Perhaps formal meditation is sometimes overrated, what was Otis Redding doing "sittin' at the dock of the bay"..

[Unota]

Hmm, I don't really do anything at all. It's too late to really 'start' or invest in anything, so I often just lie there and...chill? I often have problems falling asleep, so it's not good to get invested in anything in the evenings...I won't want to go to bed.

I have ADHD too! but rather than the 'boredom' problem, I get too deeply lost in things. It's hard for me to prioritize my focus to important things. Hours go by, I do not even notice that I am hungry, that I haven't eaten yet, or...that it is now three in the morning.

[liminal_luke]

An evening alone?  That sounds heavenly.  Hasn't happened in months though.

[dwai]

Play music, listen to music, paint, meditate, vegetate (depends on what I’m in the mood for)  

[silent thunder]

My alone time comes in the mornings. (and sort of on my drive home aside from the freeway friends   )

 

Evenings are spent with my wife and son and we play a lot of games together. 

But mornings are delightful solitude and abiding as i am, in simple presence.  Thinking or not. 

 

For many years now i wake naturally around 3:30.  On school days that gives me an hour and a half before leaving for work.  i make my lunch, then go to my beloved backless chair, fold my legs and tuck in with tea or coffee.  Maya jumps up once settled and Snoopie's across my lap.  (she's done wonders in aiding opening the kua over 12 years)

 

sound bathing most days, never anything with a story though... this one is a regular

Spoiler

 

 

If i don't work and it's a free day i go for a long meandering walk barefoot through my neighborhood.  The hour before dawn is such a treasure!  It's like that pause of stillness at the end of a long, deeply relaxed exhale.  So blissfully calm and quiet and yet pregnant with simplest presence!  Most of the night critters are settling in for dawn and the day folk are still asleep.  i think of it as the Temple of Silence

 

i write every day when i don't work, generally it's after my walk, when bliss and bouyancy are flowing.

 

On my drives home which are not truly alone time due to driving... i tend to listen to interviews, lectures, satsangs.  Of late, Bernardo Kastrup has been my new love.  His insightful musings on Idealism are the bees knees!

[Bhathen]

.https://www.youtube.com/@rajivsurendra/videos

 

Edited February 22 by Bhathen

[Feng69]

Hello,

 

I'm the lucky one 😉 who sees his partner only at weekends.

During the week I come home at 5 pm and after a bit of housework I practice 3 or 4 hours Taiji, Qigong, Meditation.

More correct to say, two days the week I first go to the gym for some resistance exercises and on the running machine before the internal practice. At these two days I practice only two hous internal.

After all of that, reading and sleeping.

I'm loving it. 

[Maddie]

I work a lot, I love my couch! :-)

[Mark Foote]

I usually watch the news, see what friends have posted on Facebook, and then lately watch an episode of Perry Mason.  

I sit for 25 minutes before bed, sloppy half-lotus.  Lately I seem to be sitting longer than 25, and sometimes two sittings. 

 

Mostly up again after 4 or 5 hours of sleep.  I do some Tai Chi and maybe another sitting, then back to bed for a few more hours, if I can.  Up at 7 or 8 and a cup of coffee, another sitting or two, start my day.