avatarAlison

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Running Out of Creative Ideas? Boredom May be Just the Answer

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

From an early age, I would spend every single Saturday at my Nan and Granddads. If I’m brutally honest, back then I remember feeling a little peed off about that, as my friends would be going to the cinema, ice skating or shopping.

My day would be pretty structured, and would consist of:

  • Driving into town to go to the butchers with Nan to collect her meat for the week
  • Having cheese and crackers for “elevensies” (do people even have this any more?)
  • Helping out with the gardening
  • Helping out with making the meat pie that we’d have for lunch
  • Doing my maths homework with her

Then, once all the above jobs were satisfied, which was by late afternoon, I would be left to my own devices to do whatever I wanted whilst my grandparents had their afternoon nap.

But the same thing would happen every Saturday. And I’d get ready for it. As soon as I didn’t have anything to do, I became bored. I remember the exact feeling which I think every human being on this planet is familiar with. A restless, uncomfortable feeling that you want to snap your fingers and get rid of. I felt a need for time to hurry up so I could get back to my home comforts. It was predictable, and without fail, would engulf me as soon as they’d go to sleep.

However, every time I experienced this feeling, because I didn’t have a ‘quick fix’ at hand (the TV was off limits as they slept in their armchairs) I had no choice but to wait it out, and effectively, fully embrace the horrible feeling. There was no hiding. No computer game in sight, no phone to text with.

Despite the discomfort I would predictably feel without fail, every single Saturday afternoon, I would get through it, by finding myself something to do. With very limited things to hand, I had to be creative here. It was a time for me to use my imagination to conjure up any activity I could play on my own. I won’t go into details, as they certainly weren’t what you’d call interesting in this day and age, but these activities consisted of Marbles, Drawing, The Dressing Up Game, The Phonebook Memory Game, and my favourite of them all, The Mirror Game.

“The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.”

— Dorothy Parker

Before I knew it, the horrible feeling had disappeared, and I was in a dream world of adventure and fun, and I would leave their house with a feeling of contentment. In fact, sometimes I’d be so engrossed in what I was doing, I didn’t want to leave any more.

I do believe where I didn’t have any quick fix to fill the boredom as a child, it helped me all the way into adulthood. It’s taught me to deal with the ‘waiting situations’ in life where you’ve got to ‘make do’. To not panic if we are delayed 10 hours for a flight. Or if there’s a power cut half way through watching a box set. It’s fine. We can play marbles.

I’ve worked out, if you are bored, there is always something to learn or to do if you put your mind to it. It takes a little patience.

Let’s flip to today’s world, a few decades on from those Saturdays. First of all, I feel like we never have to wait for anything anymore so it’s quite difficult to be bored. I feel like life is geared up now so it is almost impossible to be. You can order food and feels like it’s at your front door before you’ve clicked on the ‘pay’ button. You don’t even have to type a password in the phone anymore, just look at it. And if you want to find a TV show, hell, just shout it into your remote.

But despite this, and all these things we have access to remove our boredom quickly and sharply, would you still say that you got bored at times?

I would think your answer is yes.

I do too. And that doesn’t make us bad people. I’m convinced boredom will forever exist, as long as we are human.

It’s what we do when boredom strikes that counts.

And, probably the most frequent things we all do when the uncomfortable feeling of boredom rears its head… Grab our phone or watch the TV. Boredom disappears with a puff of smoke. Amazing right? That was easy! Inside our body, we are taking a deep sigh of relief.

But, what’s a better feeling, relief, or satisfaction? Despite feeling relief, do we feel satisfied after looking through social media or quickly finding something on the TV? As satisfied as we would if we had just waited it out and done something a little more creative?

“Boredom always precedes a period of great creativity.”

— Robert M Pirsig

What we aren’t doing, is allowing ourselves to experience the feeling of boredom, because we simply do not like it. I’ve decided lately not to do the ‘automatic phone grab’ when it all goes a bit quiet at home and I feel like boredom is setting. When there isn’t anything to occupy my mind for that time. And the first time recently I decided to do it, it was a little strange at first, but by not getting distracted, after about five minutes I decided to sit down and write this. I am trying to learn to go back to how I was on those Saturday afternoons, to be comfortable with the uncomfortable.

What if, more of us just thought “f*ck it… I’m ready for you boredom, give me all you’ve got!” And we allowed the feeling of boredom to last that little longer than five minutes. Sounds very unappealing, I know, but we may just find an answer, in something that we never ever thought we would. We may try out a new skill, realise we are actually good at something. Boredom may actually be the answer to our suffering. That may take two reads to sink in, but it may be.

When my daughter grows up and I hear the inevitable saying “Mum, I’m bored”, there will be times when we are all at our wit’s end and I’ll need to pass her a ‘quick fix’. But I’d like to think more often than not, my answer will be “Good darling, this is a positive thing. You are on the verge of creation. Hang on in there, and let’s see what comes up.”

And, if that fails, I’ll just introduce her to The Mirror Game.

Self
Self Improvement
Ideas
Positive Thinking
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