Thoughts on Being Bored

I used to have a book that promised 1001 things to do. The title was slightly misleading: the authors counted similar activities individually. For instance, “start a book club!” and “start a mystery book club!” might be two separate items.

They also often had the misfortune of requiring more people to available to participate, specific skills I lacked (like being able to ride a bike), or other things outside my childhood self’s purview. (“Start a detective agency! Find a lost dog! Solve a gruesome double-homicide!”)

Still others were so easy there was no point in trying to be entertained by them: why would I want to make a cootie catcher? That was sooo grade one. Organize my room? One, not fun, two, already done. And you can’t be telling me to read a book — that is my default activity. As indicated by the fact that, you know, my first impulse when bored is to pick up this one and see if it can entertain me.

These days, it’s easy not to be bored, or at least, not to know I’m bored. The Internet takes care of that. There are so many things I can be checking — clickbait articles, acquaintances’ trivial status updates, every sour permutation of responses to every overstated-for-the-page-visits thinkpiece. I always seem to have something to do, even if I’m not particularly enjoying it.

In fact, it’s kind of difficult to remember exactly how I entertained myself before I got my smartphone several years back. Having the Internet everywhere is relatively new to me. Heck, having the Internet at all is: we didn’t get it at home until I was about thirteen, and I didn’t even have a cell phone until grad school.

And a lot of the non-smartphone stuff I do remember doing for fun has stopped being entertaining now that I have to do it. For instance, in elementary school, my friend and I used to amuse ourselves by baking or cooking something. These days, making dinner is a daily chore. It’s not so relaxing when I know there will be consequences for not getting it done.

Planning exciting get-togethers? Composing letters to faraway friends? Writing a story?

All those things were great free-time fun when I didn’t need to do them — when I could see my nearby friends every day because we all went to school together, and didn’t know that if I stopped writing to my distant friends, we’d pretty much fall out of touch, and wasn’t immersed in making a career out of my favourite activity.

Even fandom can feel like a never-ending chore when there are always new theories, fics, analysis, pieces of art, etc. popping up online. Spoilers to avoid or seek out, which means keeping up with the projected release schedule of episodes or movies or books. The lazy pleasure of reading someone else putting into words what I already know so I don’t have to think about it, but also so I know what the rest of fandom thinks. Unless you keep on the cutting edge, you’re out of the loop.

And what about reading all those books, watching all those episodes, playing all those games? Or maintaining my little apartment garden, learning to fold origami, trying out a new activity? All that takes time too. And so does deciding in exactly which pastime I’ll invest today’s precious excess minutes.

Instead of evoking gratitude for having so many appealing entertainment options and time to pursue them, my recreational options stoke my anxiety over relaxing “right.” I have to maximize my enjoyment of free time, or else I’m wasting it.

Somewhere along the way, my “fun things to do!” list transmuted into my “fun things I have to do!” list. And that can cross the “fun” right off of there.

Which, obviously, is a problem I’m very fortunate to face. But it seems a shame that instead of appreciating how lucky I am to have time to relax, I manage to turn the whole thing into a self-involved constant assessment of whether I’m having optimal fun.

So instead, I gravitate to the things that give me small amounts of guaranteed instant gratification — the listicles, the special-interest news articles, the reaction videos I WON’T BELIEVE!!!!. As long as I don’t have to invest much energy to pursue them, it’s okay that they don’t provide me with any long-lasting happiness, insight, or restfulness.

But is any of that much better than being bored? Building up restlessness until I have enough activation energy to actually initiate myself out of my chair? After all, my favourite writing time was when I was bored: sitting in the back of a high school or university class, not paying attention because I was confident in my knowledge of the material.

What if I’ve forgotten how to do it?

What if I’ve forgotten how to do it because I’ve been so obsessed with not doing it? Better to do something, anything, than nothing. Being bored is wasteful! I have time, opportunity, hundreds of tasks or entertainments that can boost my productivity or change the way I see things! I am lucky and grateful!

And desperate?

Maybe I have to learn to be okay with being bored again. Or, rather, to be okay enough with being bored that I don’t desperately grasp at the first semi-entertaining things I see. That I hold out for what will actually make me an interested, interesting person.

After all, having the time to be bored is something I can be thankful for too.