Today, in my essay, I will talk about my personal experience of experiencing boredom. But first I will give the definition of boredom, and what exactly do I mean by boredom.
This is a feeling of complete emptiness and absence of purpose in life, created by a vacuum of meaning in personal existence; and manifested by the symptom of boredom.

Having given the definition, now, I will describe my experience of living through the symptom of boredom. Per my first higher education qualification, I am a financier. I have extensive experience in the banking sector. During certain initial stages of my banking career, I was interested in working for the finance sector. But, in some other later times, during that career, I experienced exactly the kind of feelings, that I am now studying and writing about.

I was hired for the position of Deputy at the Department of Electronic Payment Systems. It was a good place in terms of material wealth and career growth, and at first I was very happy. I got used to it and the friendly team. But, ince I was comfortable in the position, I guaged the range of my responsibilities in that position. I realized that they were practically nonexistent. At first I tried to come up with some responsibilities for myself, but then I realized that this too, was impossible there.

Imagine that you are an adult, an active person in life, every day you come to a work, in which, not only do you have no interest, but you have no individual relevance with it, at all. My subordinates had certain obligatory current tasks that they completed on their own. My help was needed only in cases when something went wrong. This did not happen often - at most 2 times in a quarter. The rest of the time, I had to be in my office waiting for someone to contact me with some kind of problem.

For 2 years, I experienced all the symptoms of boredom, almost continuously, deadly, dull, dreary, stale, soporific, and torpid emotions. In order to somehow occupy myself, I began to eat more often than usual; and also began to smoke. This, at least to some extent, absorbed my time. Given that my material compensation, in that job, was high, and given that it was very difficult to find a good job in Russia at that time, I did not even think about changing my job. I thought that I would wait-out this time, endure it, and then, after a while, things will become more clear.

Dopamine hormones are a reward for achieving the understanding of the existence of an existential vacuum. Happiness is a secondary product of the realization of meaning. If, at that time, had I known about all this, I would have, most likely, thought about sacrificing my material well-being of that job, instead of living with emptiness and existential vacuum. But, at that time, I was not aware about these, to such a degree.
Those were two years of torture and incredible boredom. I used to be in very bad mood, most of the times. I did not perceive or experience pleasures as such. The acts of gluttony and consumption (purchases and food) did not give me any inner saturation. There was no fulfillment or completeness within me.

However, despite that, I am sure that this period of my life was not lived in vain. Having such an experience, I know all the symptoms of boredom in myself and I know for sure that I definitely don't want to live this, ever again, in this life. When I left that job and settled for another position, where I really had to apply my strengths and my knowledge, I felt like a cork flying out of a bottle of champagne. The energy accumulated within me, for two years spilled over onto the new project. To this day, I remember the intense feeling of pleasure and satisfaction at working in that new place.

Now I never stop repeating to my clients that happiness is a by-product of the realization of individual meanings. I believe that this statement should be promoted and explained at all stages of formal education, from the kindergarten to the university; so that people, at a young age, can understand boredom and could possibly get out of boring situations faster.