bearblog carnival: boredom
In the Bearblog Carnival February 2026, Winther asks:
Are you ever bored, what do you do when you are feeling bored or are we even capable of feeling bored in this age of limitless digital entertainment?
What comes to mind about the topic is that we are quick to demonize boredom, but we should cherish it instead. Boredom serves such important roles: A separation between tasks, rest, and room for thoughts to emerge.
I know the latter is something we often don't want; it's very easy to spiral into depressive thoughts and self-doubt. But if you block off the bad, you also block off the good.
When I get to be bored (or at least, no external stimulation), my brain becomes creative and curious. I formulate questions and arguments, I think of researching something or topics to write blog posts about, or things I'd like to draw. I suddenly see problems or topics from a different angle, and I come up with solutions. There's room for me to remember tasks I had forgotten to do, or that I should reach out to people I haven't talked to in a while. I think of unexpected favors to do for people around me and acknowledge my own needs.
And: Everything just feels less crammed in my brain, instead of just being back-to-back-input until my head feels heavy at the end of the day.
Boredom is like having time to finally check the mailbox and opening any letters that came in. There are so many thought processes going on more subconsciously, as well as things you distract yourself from that wait to be acknowledged and dealt with.
In that mental image, they all arrive in your mailbox as little letters, but if you don't check for a while, the mailbox overflows. Seeing the overflowing mailbox makes you more anxious and uncomfortable, so you distract yourself further, but it's not getting better. All you can do in that moment is really try to sit with it and acknowledge it all. The letters will be a lot, but they will slow down. At some point, the mailbox will be empty again. And the more often you let yourself get bored and therefore check in with it, the more manageable it will be - just 2-4 letters at a time.
I recently reflected on the fact that it's gotten hard to attain true boredom, or the space to have guilt-free boredom. There is always something I should be doing - either it's work, or studying, or volunteering, or blogging, or household stuff, time with my wife, taking care of friendships, maintaining a server, drawing, journaling, reading books, finally starting the sewing project I keep putting off, and so on. There is currently not a free moment where these things don't yell at me. It's too easy to see time spent doing nothing and engaging in intentional boredom as "wasted time", but I try to be mindful of the things I wrote above. It's a lesson I learned almost exactly a year ago.
In "restful weekend", I wrote:
"For the first time in who knows how long, there was nothing nagging at me, no guilt, no pressure to optimize my time to make the most of it. I could just exist and rest, like it was my job.
While just staring at nothing or lying down focusing on my breathing, I didnāt feel lazy or too fatigued to do anything; it felt productive, positive, like this is what Iām meant to do. Usually itās easy to know Iām supposed to rest on weekends, but harder to allow myself to do so and feel good about doing it. Resting or doing nothing often instead feels like a defeat and I canāt enjoy it as much because I think about things I could or should be doing instead.
But nothing like that could touch me this time. I felt like I had an infinite amount of time, so I didnāt feel nervous about how I spend it. There was no invisible timer. It felt like childhood."
[...]
"I sometimes have trouble with starting or switching tasks. It suddenly seems overwhelming and exhausting to start, no matter how small the activity is. I used to force myself through it or waste time with something else until it felt possible enough to start the things I had in mind. It usually felt frustrating and draining. Iāve changed my approach; if things feel overwhelming and hard to start now and I feel an inner resistance to all options, I go somewhere comfortable and bore myself on purpose.Iāll just sit there, do nothing, decompress. I ground myself, I look around the room, and wait it out. No media. I have time. My other approach could sometimes result in 1-2 hours of delay until getting started on something, if at all; and usually I would get frustrated and mad about it. But like this, Iām usually ready to get started within 10-20 minutes and I donāt feel moody at all. I think I just need a genuine break to refresh internally [...]"
Of course, there's also the aspect of avoiding boredom by consuming constantly.
In another post, I highlighted a quote about boredom by Kate Lindsey:
"Boredom is when you do the dishes, run the errand youāve been putting off, respond to the text youāve left on read. Boredom is when you bring a book to read on the subway or make small talk with the person in front of you in line about how slow the pharmacy is. Boredom is when you do the things that make you feel like you have life under control. Not being bored is why you always feel busy, why you keep ānot having timeā to take a package to the post office or work on your novel. You do have time ā you just spend it on your phone. By refusing to ever let your brain rest, you are choosing to watch other peopleās lives through a screen at the expense of your own."
And with that, I think I have said everything I could say :)
Reply via email
Published