{"id":2282,"date":"2015-02-22T17:28:26","date_gmt":"2015-02-22T22:28:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/?p=2282"},"modified":"2015-02-22T17:28:26","modified_gmt":"2015-02-22T22:28:26","slug":"boredom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/2015\/02\/22\/boredom\/","title":{"rendered":"Boredom"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"_DSC0279\"<\/a>It is rare that I find myself bored; perhaps it\u2019s a function of my age, how I grew up or my natural curiosity.\u00a0 I\u2019m always doing something and more often than not it\u2019s usually devoid of technology.\u00a0 Technology and I have come to an understanding. I think.\u00a0 I get it, I use it, it doesn\u2019t use me.\u00a0 I have a baseline that I continue to come back to and that comes from really knowing myself.<\/p>\n

York University professor John Eastwood explains that boredom is just \u201cwanting to, but being unable to engage in satisfying activity.\u201d\u00a0 He goes on to distinguish boredom from apathy. \u00a0\u201cThe [bored] person is not engaged but wants to be. \u00a0With apathy, he said, there is no urge to do something.\u201d<\/p>\n

Richard Ralley, a lecturer in psychology at Edge Hill University in England who studied boredom, said it came to make a kind of sense: If people are slogging away at an activity with little reward, they get annoyed and find themselves feeling bored. If something more engaging comes along, they move on. If nothing does, they may be motivated enough to think of something new themselves. The most creative people, he said, are known to have the greatest toleration for long periods of uncertainty and boredom.<\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s important to realize that boredom isn\u2019t necessarily a negative thing states Richard Louv, Co-Founder and Chairman Emeritus of the Children & Nature Network, there\u2019s a big difference between\u00a0a\u00a0negatively numbed brain and a constructively bored mind.\u00a0Constructive boredom stimulates\u00a0creativity. \u00a0Constructively bored kids eventually turn to a book, or build a fort, or pull out the paints (or the computer art program) and create, or come home sweaty from a game of neighborhood basketball.\u00a0 I feel like I\u2019m still there, still self-directed, and inventive as Louv calls it.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not impossible to achieve even if you don\u2019t feel you\u2019ve ever been there.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t mean you\u2019re boring if you\u2019re bored, give it a twist and make it to your advantage.<\/p>\n

If you find yourself in a meeting that just willll nottt endddd and you\u2019re sure you will die of boredom, try doodling.\u00a0 “I can\u2019t tell you how important it is to draw,” says Sunni Brown. “It gets the neurons to fire and expands the mind.” Just why and how this happens is the topic of Brown’s recent book, The Doodle Revolution<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Studies have shown that doodling can free up short- and long-term memory, improve content retention and increase attention span. It can also produce creative insight, because “when the mind starts to engage with visual language, you get neurological access that you don\u2019t have when you’re in a linguistic mode,” says Brown. \u00a0You could turn that meeting into a win for yourself. Just sayin.<\/p>\n

Leave your phone behind for certain things.\u00a0 When I walk the dog each morning I don\u2019t take my phone or any technology, I simply walk.\u00a0 I pay attention to where I\u2019m going and what\u2019s around me and I am engaged.\u00a0 Here\u2019s what I would have missed just this morning if I was looking at my phone or had ear buds in:<\/p>\n

A whistle from the Aunt M\u2019s deck that led to an invitation to breakfast.<\/p>\n

Toto face first in the snow, several times, on purpose and a huge belly laugh and sigh of relief that she was playing (after losing Lina).<\/p>\n

Hearing the scraping of a shovel stop abruptly to look over and see a worker looking up to the sky.\u00a0 There were two Blue Jays in \u201cdog fight\u201d mode above us.\u00a0 To me that\u2019s a sure sign of spring.<\/p>\n

\"070\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Boredom is a self-reflective emotion you can get lost in and use to your advantage.\u00a0 John Lennon understood it\u2019s not just watching shadows on the wall <\/a>you\u2019re about to create.\u00a0 Boredom teaches the brain to create if given the chance.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m bored\u2019 is a useless thing to say. I mean, you live in a great, big, vast world that you\u2019ve seen none percent of. Even the inside of your own mind is endless; it goes on forever, inwardly, do you understand? The fact that you\u2019re alive is amazing, so you don\u2019t get to say \u2018I\u2019m bored.\u201d \u2015 Louis C.K.<\/em><\/p>\n

Some of my most memorable legacy moments sprung from boredom, a ride with my father, a belly laugh with Cookie on a slow afternoon, new places to explore with camera in hand. \u00a0Boredom is the equivalent of \u201cif life gives you lemons\u2026\u201d Try making some creative lemonade.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is rare that I find myself bored; perhaps it\u2019s a function of my age, how I grew up or my natural curiosity.\u00a0 I\u2019m always doing something and more often than not it\u2019s usually devoid of technology.\u00a0 Technology and I … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,6],"tags":[548,577,579,580,578],"class_list":["post-2282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fathers-daughter-moments","category-pause-points","tag-legacyinthemaking","tag-boredom","tag-create","tag-doodling","tag-if-life-gives-you-lemons"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s27hQ5-boredom","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2282"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2282\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2285,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2282\/revisions\/2285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}