Creative boredom

People differ. This is why "one-size-fits-all" mandates and legislation never fit all.

I've always found a little bit of boredom to be essential for my mental health. Not the toxic kind of boredom, such as what I experienced in kinderprison classrooms, but creative boredom. The kind of boredom that, when it happens, allows you to do whatever comes to mind, eagerly, to relieve the boredom, without feeling rushed or like you're neglecting something else. And without someone screaming at you to pay attention, get to work, and stop daydreaming.

Call it free time, with no plan and no guilt.

If I have a dozen projects nagging for my attention the only kind of boredom that strikes is the destructive kind.

But if I have nothing to do, and there's nothing I feel I should be doing, my creativity can flow.

I've had too little of the good kind of boredom recently. I used to have tons of it. My wikiup and tipi area was where a lot of it happened. It was a daily mental vacation, and I miss it. (I've been trying without success to find a replacement for years now.)

The past couple of months have been unusually hectic-- tons of projects and "obligations" in various stages of completion with no time to take a breath. 

Usually, when I'm doing some mindlessly repetitive task I get bored and can at least think. That hasn't been the case with these projects, probably because they've required too much thought and attention. They've drained my brain and my body.

I have an art project I've been needing to work on (for my dad's birthday), but without time to get bored, it just hasn't happened. It's not something I can just decide I'm going to do, like a physical or mental task-- if I do it this way it would be a failure because of a lack of creativity. I have to have time to get bored enough to get creative.

I also find it harder to let my mind come up with blog posts and newspaper columns if there's no time for my mind to wander. Recently, because of this, I haven't had time to tone down my newspaper columns for "public consumption" as much as I normally do. Not sure if that's good or bad.

So this next week, I have declared my very own "No projects week". Maybe it's my spring break. Yes, there will probably be blog posts-- if I let my mind wander, they just come to me whether I want them or not. But I'm not going to be forcing anything. I plan on boring myself into creativity and hoping it recharges my batteries.

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