The Thursday! Newsletter 1-42: Let's Just Be Bored
Volume 1, Issue 42
I miss being bored.
When I was a kid, I got bored all the time -- at least that's what it felt like to me at the time. At breakfast, because there wasn't a lot of conversation with all the bustling about, I'd grab the cereal box and read it. My Mom didn't like that because the breakfast table wasn't for reading, but I was bored. My brain wanted something to do and there just wasn't enough to keep its motor running as hot as it wanted. I used to doodle space ships during class when I got all my work done. My teachers weren't thrilled with my Colonial Vipers and Cylon Basestars, but I didn't disrupt class and my grades were top-notch so what could they do? In the summer, when my friends were on vacation or just didn't feel like playing baseball, I'd turn a pile of wood and an old swingset into a spaceship or a fort on the edge of a vast unexplored frontier. I'd grab a book off my Dad's bookshelf and I wasn't terribly picky about what I read -- a volume of the Encyclopedia Brittanica, Erick von Daniken's "Chariot of the Gods", a Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew mystery, a Bible commentary. It didn't matter as long as it gave my brain something juicy on which to chow down.
Nowadays I don't get bored like I used to. Or perhaps I do but I satisfy that boredom in a different way that doesn't feel quite as good. My language this week is going to be a little imprecise because, believe it or not, I don't have perfect nor precise words to describe the sort of restlessness I've felt the past year or two since I've noticed how little I feel bored.
Let me describe the feeling in the hopes that you've felt something similar. You're sitting somewhere, let's say your desk at work, and you feel...bored. Nothing is interesting. Your brain is poking you like a little kid who wants a candy bar from the rack by the cash register and it's starting to bug you. Why won't your brain settle down? Why is it huffing and sighing and itching for the right thing to look at or read? You hop from phone app to web page to text message to...anything else. Nothing suits. You ask yourself what you'd like to do right now and the answer comes back, slightly whiny, I don't knooooooow!
That's boredom, right there. That's your brain looking to wander, to hop and skip over a few different things just because. It doesn't want a giant cup of something but five smaller cups of different things so it can sip from each one. Recognize it? Oh, I do. And I'll let you in on a little secret. I've been bored a lot more than I remember or even recognize, but stuff I've learned -- most of it not very good -- has changed how I think of boredom. Maybe you're in the same boat. Let's see.
Yesterday, I came across a blog post from a quite successful writer titled "4 ways to master the art of Strategic Boredom". What in the world is "strategic boredom". As it turns out, it's not okay to just be bored. You have to get something from your boredom. You should make those times when your brain goes off to gather wool productive. Your brain must come back loaded with grist for your mill and ready to get to work! It's not okay to just be bored, spend a little time in your boredom, then come out of it and get back to whatever it is you need to do. Not these days, and not for a while.
Let me tell you a little personal story. For most of my adult life, I've been a police dispatcher. In short, I've been paid to sit behind a radio console and telephone, answer incoming calls, and handle them appropriately. That's my job. However, we always had supervisors who leaned hard into a little part of our job description that read "Other duties as assigned". They'd see us sitting behind our console, perhaps reading a book, or writing something, or not doing anything in particular, and decide we weren't being paid to just sit there. They'd give us busywork -- stuff to fill up our shift with something. But that's not why I was there, was it? I wasn't there to help with filing reports or sorting out rosters or anything else. I was there to handle incoming calls and if we had times when the calls weren't coming in, so be it. They didn't necessarily bring in other people to help me when there were almost more calls than I could handle, when I would move from call to call to call, one after the other, with barely time to catch a breath. I was paid for that, you see, not for the down times when my brain could catch up to the rest of the world.
But that's our work culture isn't it? I'm a big fan of a solid work ethic and I'd not change the foundations of our economic system here in the US, but I'm also a big fan of how our our brains work, too. We need to be bored. We are not made to be always busy, always reading and reacting, always on our toes, always hustling. We think, we deal with a crisis, we do work, then we catch ourselves up, physically and mentally. Our brains need to be bored every bit as much as our brains need a good night's sleep. If you want solid background on that, check out this article, ask Austin Kleon, or read this on why boredom is especially important for children. Boredom is where our brains get to come out and play. It is the place where really cool ideas are born. Ever notice how many creative folks get ideas while they're driving old, familiar routes or while they're standing in the shower? Boredom!
What happens to us in reality, though? We get bored so we grab our phones and check e-mail or doom-scroll Facebook or Twitter. We feel guilty so we head into the busywork pile. You know that pile, right? That's the pile of work that really doesn't ever need to be done but we keep it around in case we get bored and need to "earn our keep". We must keep busy so we give our bouncing brains a little mental sedative to shut it up.
But...what if we didn't. What if we -- and stick with me here because this is going to sound weird -- sought out times to be bored? What if we let our bored minds lead us to doodling or playing with clay or army men? What if we wrote a boredom poem full of nonsense words or wrote a little story out of nowhere? What if we just dug around in the dirt or walked around and took pictures of whatever odd leaf or anthill caught our attention? What if we named clouds or imagined a mighty battle in space far beyond anything we could see? What if we got in our own space ship and joined the battle on the side of good and right? Would that hurt us? I can't see how it would. It's possible you might get so distracted you walk into traffic or off a cliff, but that's not much of a risk, is it? I don't think anyone has a working space fighter sitting around, so it's not likely you'll get blown to atoms by some alien disintegrator cannon. The leaves won't hurt unless you wander into a poison ivy patch. Might want to look that one up real quick, so you know what it looks like. Poison Sumac, too.
What I'm saying here is it's okay to be bored. It's okay to stay bored for a little while, too. It's okay to answer a friends "What are you up to?" text with "Not a thing. Kind of bored. Looking at a flower right now." That's cool. Really. I give you permission to be bored and look at flowers! If anyone gives you static, just tell them some guy on the internet said it's okay. They'll buy that. They'll probably think you got it from some smart person's website or YouTube video. You don't have to tell them differently. You'll be too busy being bored, wondering what it would be like to be small enough to walk around inside the bloom of a sunflower.
(I'll tell you what it's like. Cool. That's what it's like. Try it and see if you don't believe me.)
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What I Wrote Last Week
"A Storm Broke Over My House Today" is a little poem that looks a gift horse in the, well, not the mouth as such, but not as such a grand thing.
"Starlight, Star Bright" is a story with a wish and a woe.
I married a photo I took on a Sunday afternoon with a little verse that came to mind when I took it.
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One Last Thing
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