Being bored...

Now that I have completed my photography submission and partied with Hall n Oates, it is time to put the writing hat back on.  So far, so awesome.  I sat down tonight to work on a guest blog entry for a writer friend I met at the retreat in Colorado, and thanks to Debbie Gibson I came up with some great stuff.  I usually don't like to listen to music when I write; I need complete silence in order for my neurons to locate each other in the darkness of my mind.  But tonight I just felt like listening to cheesy old school pop, so I put on an old Debbie album.  The cool thing I found is that maybe sometimes it's a good thing not to have your synapses firing.  With the music playing, I couldn't sit and contemplate any one thought too deeply, so instead I just started writing random things that popped into my head, no matter how unrelated they seemed.  And, lo and behold, I found once more that I am my greatest mentor.

When I decided I wanted to start writing again a couple of years ago, I had in mind a book on creating a creative foundation for your children.  My favorite, and the central, point of the book is my belief that boredom is the father of creation.  As I was writing this evening, this line kept echoing in my head for some reason.  Boredom is the father of creation.  I had had this in mind as related to childrearing.  I believe children today are offered too many "interactive" toys that require little to no imagination because they do everything for themselves- dolls that wet themselves, trucks that make their own noises, building toys that can only be connected to make one sole outcome.  Tonight I realized that this principle applies as much to adults as to children.  Of course I am not getting writing done.  I am not bored.  I am constantly finding things to occupy myself- work, emails, cleaning, worrying.  Things that would not make the world stop on its axis if they were to be completed a day-or a week- later.

As adults we are rarely bored.  We are too busy.  That's an endless expanse of creativity that is not being honored.  I have learned in the last year of doing this blog (it will be a year next week!) how to integrate thought into my busy lifestyle.  Now my challenge is to integrate writing.  I need boredom.  I need to sit around the house and do nothing.  This, though seemingly lazy and unproductive, is where ideas are born.  When my mind and heart are not consumed with busy work, they will focus on the necessary.  They will focus on creating.  I think we could all benefit from a little boredom now and then.  This is why I miss front porches; this is why I love the scene in The Man in the Moon where she stares into her empty glass; this is why I miss the "old days".  We were less distracted by the trivial, and so more focused on the essential.  Ironic how my writing reemerged from my desire to get off the couch and has now led me right back to the couch.  (That qualifies as irony, right Chris?!)          

Some more of our friends from Butterfly World!