The Lost Gift of Being Bored
I think April in New England is the most challenging month there is. Winter is over—but wait, there’s more. It’s hot, it’s not. It rains, it’s raw, it’s gray, it’s gorgeous, then it snows. And snows some more. The temperature? Pick a number, any number. 22? 45? 77? 53? 31? Yes. You’re right. I wake up wondering if I’ll need shorts or a snow shovel for my morning hike. The long awaited ritual of turning off the heat for the season becomes a personal challenge to see just how low the house temp can go before I give in and turn it back on (the answer is 60 degrees.)
Life starts to feel stale and worn in April. I feel stale and worn. Wait, what’s that feeling? It’s like a favorite lost sock found under the bed and covered in dust bunnies and carpet fuzz. The feeling is boredom. Bored of New England spring remaining a mirage—the more I reach for it the farther off it feels. Bored of feeling like I don’t have energy to create, do, try anything because it all requires too much boring outerwear and slugging through raw cold. Even in the house. (I wore sandals yesterday. It was 49 degrees. I just couldn’t put on the socks and boots again.) I’m in it—boredom.
I’ve struggled for years about how to manage this April-feeling. How to make myself “feel better.” This year was different. I decided to just to let it be exactly as it was and me exactly as I was in it. Nature waits. Leans in. Goes with the flow. Could I? I could. I have a few decades of practice doing just that.
I remembered back to my childhood void of the internet and smartphones and even cable television. A childhood that included a necessary life-process (one we have mostly lost) where nothing-to-do was part of the norm, not a character flaw or or a signal to turn on a screen and go numb. When I whined, “I’m bored,” I was told to “figure it out,” “read a book,” “go outside.” That’s when the magic happened—the miraculous process that turns a whole lot of nothing into an vivid exploration of imagination, cloud-pondering into a self-discovery, and a ten-speed bike into a mini-adventure (or misadventure) someplace you aren’t supposed to go. Once, in fourth grade, I made a four-story dollhouse out of shoe boxes and spent hours searching for scrapes to make furniture, curtains, rugs and accessories. I fully furnished all eight rooms in one day. All because it was a rainy, very boring Saturday in April.
Plus, I didn’t have any other option. Now we all have other options. How many boring moments have you used to bathe in negative news and inane social media posts that are about as nourishing as a bucket of Halloween candy? Have you ever gotten off your Instagram feed feeling happy and fulfilled? I haven’t. Mostly I am left wondering why my morning toast doesn’t exude mythic qualities or why the list I made of make-up women over 40 must never use again or must use right now are mostly the same products.
It’s May 5th in New England. It snowed three days ago. It’s going up to 68 degrees today and down to 38 degrees tonight. I am weary of being teased by weather and ending up cold. Weary of the gray sky and tepid wind. Of winter hanging on and on. I’m tired of paying for heat. Yes, I’m bored and as hard as it is, I am leaning into the boredom. Here’s what happened: Instead of making a dollhouse, I have an idea to write a book about them. I started. That’s nourishing for me. And okay, truth be told, if I had a bucket of Halloween candy next to me while writing, I wouldn’t be shy about testing every piece to see if it was stale.
Be bored. It’s a gift. Open it. See what’s inside. Elizabeth