Have I become boring?

[Mypetrabbit]

For context. I'm 50 with dh and dc 15& 17. I work FT. In my 20s I was a party animal.

Now, I enjoy my Saturday mornings taking in the weekly food delivery. Weekly clean out & re stock the fridge. Bins out. Washing on. House cleaned. I have a very clean, tidy, organised, consistently well stocked house. Everything is decluttered, we always have what we need. I don't like theatre/art galleries/shopping. I certainly wouldn't want a day out at the weekend unless it was the seaside or lunch out. I prefer to stay local, except for seaside. Weekend nights I prefer to be in either at friends or with friends/ dh at mine. Sometimes I might suggest the local pub. I have no desire to go anywhere far away for the weekend, unless the seaside. I do go abroad a lot.

I'm not spontaneous. My messages to friends are always quite matter-of-fact. Never me suggesting to do anything. A friend is off to London today. I couldn't think of anything worse. She's excited to be going.

have I become boring ?

There is no point doing things you dislike, just because you feel you should. If you are happy living your life the way you do, that is fine. People find ways to meet their needs in all sorts of different ways.

But I do find the statement 'there is just nothing I am interested in' a bit perplexing when there is a huge, fascinating world out there to eat up.

I don't own any books.

Omg

I nearly passed out 🤣

No books???😳

Well it sounds really boring to me but who cares? It's your life not mine and as long as you're genuinely happy, the opinions of strangers should mean nothing.

This is me! I’m 37.

I tried exciting. I tried travelling. I tried “bettering myself” with hobbies and a MA.

I’m happy with calm, security, loving family and routine. It’s everything I didn’t have as a child.

Well, it’s your life and if you are content/happy then it’s nobody else’s business.
I do think it’s dull though. No new experiences or ideas to widen your outlook. I think it’s really odd not to have any books. New experiences and new memories have been shown to have a protective effect on memory and cognitive ability as we age, so that would concern me too.
I hate housework, so that aspect sounds worse than the rest to me!
Edit: I’m 60 next month. I’m doing a firewalk for it.

You do sound rather like me as I am not a particularly sociable person and am happiest pottering about at home just doing my own thing. Though I do like to read books.

We do go on holidays and enjoy some foreign travel, and we go out for occasional pub meals but that's generally it.

I'm perfectly happy being a a boring old fart. Packing in back to back social events or going out all the time would be my idea of hell.

This is t like the OP though. You like holidays and meals out. This isn’t about back to back events - it’s about not wanting any at all.

It doesn’t matter if you are boring. It matters if you are bored.

I'd happily have no events at all except for my holiday.

Life's not like that though, and every so often things come up that you just have to go to, pasting a smile on your face. I'm normally relieved when they are over.

It sounds like your only hobby is cleaning? Is that true or have you missed stuff out.
Not wanting to go into a city doesn't make you boring but you haven't said what you do like to do instead. You can't spend all your time cleaning.
What do you do with your husband and children or do they stay at home all the time too?

If you're content and happy, why do you need to ask? I would find your lifestyle boring, but you'd probably hate mine.

I'm not sure what you are asking, OP? You seem to know what you like and to find your life satisfying the way it is. Has somebody accused you of being boring?

It kind of reminds me of an episode of Wife Swap UK where the woman was obsessed with having a clean home and went to live with a biker family who didn’t care about any of that stuff and she broke down crying about how small she had made her life and how focused she was on things that didn’t matter. That may not be you but I do think good for all of us to put ourselves in unfamiliar situations from time to time to see if they spark anything in us that points us to a more enjoyable direction

Some people need constant distractions and some people don't. Your life sounds perfect to me.

Also you say you have plenty to talk about but if all you do genuinely is clean and watch reruns from the 80s and 90s what can you actually have to talk about.
Anyway doesn't really matter unless you have a problem with it but it does seem extremely limited to me.

I would find your lifestyle incredibly boring - I love the theatre, galleries, trips to London etc and I never clean the house. Anything I have to do by way of chores is grim and tedious.
But.... that doesn't mean that you are boring. Can you make interesting conversation? Tell a joke? Be a good listener to others? Those are the things that matter.

i don’t think it’s accurate to call time with wider family and friends, or time pursuing a hobby or travelling etc as ‘distractions’. To me they are the point of life, not a distraction from it.

I wish someone could teach me to.love cleaning. I only just manage it by listening to podcasts and audio books.

I've just clocked that you don't own any books, and now I'm truly shocked. How do you fill your time if you don't read??

Spending your life cleaning looks like a pretty huge distraction to me.

I feel that, at 62, I've had all the experiences I want other than holidays to places I didn't have the time or the money for before I retired.

I got out at the right time though as they've now set up a social committee who organise monthly events like a local 80s night complete with dressing up
horror of horrors

I do agree with this actually. I work with someone like the op and while I wouldn't want my weekends to look like theirs, I really enjoy their company. They're a really good person who I know would always help me if I needed it too.

You sound like me op and l am embracing being boring! Totally happy!

You sound content with your way of life. Tbh you do, do things, you're not sitting in and cleaning the house 24/7, this is part of your routine and I bet you get the house cleaned in no time as you are on top of it.

You have friends, you meet, you travel, this sounds perfectly normal to me. Not everyone likes to socialise far away, many like to visit pubs near by and most now prefer socialising at home as it's cheaper. You are with people, it's not like your sitting at home drinking bottles of wine on your own.

Ok so you don't like busy places, that's perfectly normal too. I hate shops myself especially clothes shopping but many would think this crazy to not want to shop all day.

There's nothing strange about not having books, it's only on here that the obsession with books is off the charts, I've seen women beg for help while their husbands are abusing and threatening them and they're told to read a book ! The amount who do nothing else but read books all day long could be said it's boring too, so much real life to experience.

I bet if you listed all the things that interest you, it would be a fine list, just because you don't follow the same things as others it doesn't make you boring it makes you just have different likes and enjoyment.

If you are happy then I suppose it doesn't matter. But I think in time you will become narrow minded and maybe ignorant if you don't listen to the radio / watch the news or even read books. You will get trapped at a certain age when you stopped this and it will start to become obvious to friends and your kids. It seems a bit like you have dropped out of society and real life a bit.

YABU for not recognising Pink. She is an amazing woman!!