Don’t get stuck in a summer FOBB

Even in small doses, ambition is a powerful tool

There’s a great line in the opening number of “Waitress: The Musical”:

The day starts like the rest we’ve seen
Another carbon copy of an old routine

Are they playing our song?

It’s really easy as we age to serve ourselves a heaping helping of status quo. Even changing our latitude might not change our attitude if we go to the same places over and over, seeing the same people, having the same conversations.

Let’s shine a little summer solstice light into our own eyes and lives today, reawakening our hibernating spirits, challenging ourselves to be better, revisiting a topic that plagues us from time to time: the fear of being boring. Or, even worse, the fear of being bored with ourselves.

---

---

So here’s a challenge for you, on the first day of summer. For each of the next 13 weeks, explore something different: physical, cultural, geographical, intellectual, sexual, whatever. Here are a bunch of ideas and approaches, including five I’ve done recently.

(Spoiler alert: I’m still boring. As is anyone who says “spoiler alert.”)

Pop your culture

Watching a new movie or TV series certainly counts, but don’t abuse it. (Week 1: Started a comedy series on Netflix. Week 2: Started a romantic series on Netflix. Week 3: Started a romcom series on Netflix. Week 4: Had to be surgically removed from my couch.)

Expand your horizons, not your posterior.

If you can’t go to a big-city play or concert, smaller places have county fairs and community theaters and free concerts. Lesser talents, certainly, but lesser cost and hassle, too.

Shows like “Hamilton” and “Waitress” have filmed versions of their Broadway musicals, so you can get your culture without sacrificing your couch. “Rent” was ahead of its time on that, with a great version of its final Broadway performance — far better than the movie.

And, of course, you could always take the outlandish step of reading a book, which I did. This one was written by the youngest of five siblings, children of Chinese immigrants who opened a restaurant in Silicon Valley. His experience folding dumplings even helped inspire this scene in “Crazy Rich Asians.”

The young sibling didn’t exactly need six degrees of separation to get his anecdote into the movie. He directed it. Jon M. Chu, author of “Viewfinder,” is now wicked famous.

Be a student

Study something for a week and see if it becomes a passion: a painter, a poet, a music genre you’re not used to, whether it’s country or classical or rap. Learn about another religion. Immerse yourself in books and documentaries and podcasts about an intriguing topic. Join the waves of new fans watching Formula 1 racing, Champions League soccer or the WNBA.

Want to study another language? You can find options with varying degrees of seriousness in these articles from Wirecutter, Cnet and Forbes. I dabbled in a basic course (as in “free”) from Duolingo.

Back in the Dark Ages, I’d picked up smidges of Spanish, French, Italian and Japanese. I decided on a refresher in French because its pronunciation can be challenging — nowhere near as psychotic as English, but a little troublesome because of the tendency to silence a word’s last consonant.

The “r” in “Louvre” is like the vermouth in a very dry martini.

Find a challenge

We all lapse into bad habits. If you’re not healthy, think about getting a smartwatch or taking up hiking or pickleball or any activity that will get you moving. If loneliness is more of an issue, try to make a new friendship — or defrost an old one.

Maybe all you need is a little mental exercise. I came across a free daily puzzle game called Quintumble that’s more challenging than, say, Wordle. Below is an example (don’t scroll down to the green part).

The letters in the left column are locked in place. You can move any of the other letters, but only within their columns. For example, if you swap the U and R in column 2 and the E and S in column 4, you get WRIST. There’s always a way to swap the letters so all five rows have words, but it ain’t easy.

You can get hints if you need them, but you’ll also notice that some letter combinations just wouldn’t work. How many words do you know that begin with PC or CC or WC? That might eventually lead you to this:

Teach or preach

If you’re not the sharpest knife in the drawer, you just might be in the wrong drawer.

All of us are better than the vast majority of people at something. Maybe you can teach someone to read or unclog a neighbor’s drain or help a friend with their taxes. Maybe you know CPR or shorthand or how to create a TikTok video. If you’ve raised a loving 5-year-old and your friend has a newborn, trust me: You’re an expert.

Or you can be the friend who tries to stay on top of something that’s changing lives every day, like politics or medicine or the social crisis du jour: artificial intelligence. Here is a useful road test of five AI bots.

Like all technology, AI is a valuable tool — used wisely. It can even help you stay close to loved ones.

---

---

Joshua had a good grasp of reality. AI was his methadone, not his heroin. Others haven’t used it as wisely, as this story explains.

Have an adventure

If you have the money, the time, the energy and the desire to travel someplace fresh, by all means do it. Screw our exercise and take all 13 weeks if you can.

But if your schedule, your loved ones and your wallet demand something less, you can still embrace that sense of adventure. Explore a neighboring city, walk through a different neighborhood, be the first on your block to try a new restaurant — or, better yet, a new cuisine.

If you’re a man over 60 whose feet seem to have moved to a different area code from the rest of your body, you’d be amazed what a pedicure can do. You don’t have to paint your nails, just get your calves and feet massaged and relax. And tell a friend.

My bit of recent pioneering was when a friend and I rode in a San Francisco Waymo, basically a self-driving taxi. This YouTube video isn’t from us, but can give you a feel for the experience, which involved fewer white knuckles than many an Uber ride.

The app unlocks the doors and lets you choose from a variety of music. You can sit in the front seat if you want. Just about all the cars are Jaguars. There is a way to speak to a human in an emergency. If you’re a huge hurry, don’t take one because they do silly things like yield to pedestrians and obey the speed limit.

I can see a wave of self-driving cars in our future. (Coming soon to a city near you!) As with other waves of technology, it will stir tons of debates over whether society’s gains will be worth lots of people losing their jobs.

We might be headed for even scarier times. At least they won’t be boring.

Murphy Slaw

Something old: I love a point about human nature that Patton Oswalt makes at around the 52-minute mark of this podcast conversation with David Cross, when he recalls something he heard from Chris Rock.

“If you’re a comedian and you put out an album or a special, and then you go tour and people come see you, if you do that album or special that they have seen or bought, they’ll be happy, but they’ll never come see you again because you’re like, ‘That’s all he does.’ But if you put out an album or special and people come and pay to see you live and you do a whole new hour, you have fans for life.

“And it’s the exact opposite with music groups. If you put out an album, you better play that fucking album.”

Something new: I’m not sure if this was written and edited by a human or a machine, but the intelligence is definitely artificial.

Something borrowed: A dispatch from our era or distraction.

Something blue: We all have our demons. Here’s a good insight about one type.