The importance of being bored

“Only boring people get bored!” I remember we used to say in the most annoyingly superior voice whenever some kid would moan about having nothing to do.

Oh, to bask in the sweet, stupid bliss of being a kid — when boredom was the worst thing life could throw at you. A dream.

I remember reading an interview a million years ago on the importance of boredom. “We furnish our heads in desperation when we’re bored...the best way to come up with new ideas is to get really bored.”

I guess somewhere between doomscrolling, a constant thirst for my next dopamine hit, and the weight of merely trying to survive under late-stage capitalism, I forgot how to be bored. Perhaps I was just afraid to be left alone with my thoughts for too long. Or if I want to get really dark with it, perhaps all the distractions are merely control devices — ways to occupy us so we don’t revolt.

When I was a kid, there were no iPhones or apps to distract me 24/7. My parents were strict about how much TV we were allowed to watch, so I would find myself sitting alone in my bedroom for hours staring at the paperbark trees out the window, daydreaming and drawing, recording my favourite songs from the radio onto a cassette tape (fuck, I’m old) and writing. Always writing.

I recently stumbled upon the beginnings of a novel I had written when I was about fourteen. It was so bad yet so very, very good. Who has the audacity to think they can just casually write a novel at that age? A bored, nerdy kid with strict parents, that’s who. But by being stuck in my bedroom bored, I eventually stumbled upon creativity.

~ excerpt from this post