Boredom

Boredom.

I've entered a period of life where my day to day activities are pretty routine. You might even call them boring. Now, I'm usually one who does everything I can to avoid being bored – like most people, I would imagine. Boredom seems like it can sneak up on me, but I know that there are several places I'm sure to encounter it.

For me, I get bored when I do the dishes. It's a brainless, repetitive task that requires almost no thought. But not so little thought that I can just check out to my happy place (where I happen to be an awesome ninja-poet who can conquer hordes of evil-doers and get the girl every time). No, if I check out to my happy place I'll spend the time to wash the dishes only to find little bits of crusted-on food that may or may not come off after repeated attempts. My mind has to be engaged in what I'm doing, otherwise the image of being a super-powerful ninja comes faces-to-face with the harsh reality that I can't even do the dishes very well.

Of course, I used to get really bored when I had to work in a cubicle. I remember some times when I would have to make a phone call, then another phone call, then another phone call. I was in one of those soul-sucking environments where you have to make 150-200 phone calls per day. I would literally have to force myself to dial the numbers, all the while thinking “I wish something would happen. Maybe the power will go out, or the phones will stop working. Maybe this number isn't another construction company, but a secret number for a government agency that is responsible for training super-spies. Maybe I'll get sick and go home. Sigh.”

And now, I find myself bored occasionally as well. Even though I've made the decision to leave all traces of a conventional lifestyle behind and embraced a life of adventure, I will still find myself bored from time to time. Ironically, part of this is by choice. I don't have a TV, so the usual number one place to turn when I'm bored is off the table. I also live in Oregon, so the weather usually precludes anything outside unless I feel like getting freezing cold and as wet as a dog at a cat-fish catching competition. Even though my life is headed in the direction I want it to, even though I am excited about what I get to do and the people I work with, I still find myself in moments of boredom.

But the more I experience boredom, the more I've started to learn some things about it. I've noticed that my first tendency is to try as hard as I can to quench the boredom, with almost anything at all. Books, magazines, the internet. Yes, the internet is a powerful tool. It also is a deep rabbit hole of pointless wastes of time known as flash games. It's amazing how much time I can spend trying to think of different ways to kill a pixelated elephant just to avoid that strange hollow feeling of boredom. In its own way, it's like a drug.

Of course, the more I thought about, the more I began to see that it really is an addiction. You can get your fix for boredom from a bunch of different dealers: movies, games, music, television, books, concerts, restaurants, theaters – the list goes on and on. I realized that I am actually addicted to entertainment. An entertainment-aholoic. Or alcoholo-tainmentist? Whatever, I can't go even one day without being entertained. When I look around, I see that most people are in the same situation I am. And honestly, most of the things we use to try to slake our thirst for entertainment are barely passable facades. Reality TV? Does that really entertain? No, it just distracts enough from the dreaded emptiness of boredom. But don't bore me with the details, just give me my entertainment – I don't care if it's hollow or vapid, it's fun!

I'm a junkie. There's no other way to say it. I have an addiction that I just can't break.

Not like I'm alone. I would say that, with the exception of a few rare souls, most people in this world are addicted to entertainment. Once, in South Africa, I knew a girl who lived in a shack that I wouldn't even store my lawn-mower in (if I had one). And in this shack that had no insulation, a roof that leaked, and barely enough room for a single bed that she shared with her one-year-old daughter, she had satellite TV (Ironically, she asked if I lived in a house like the people in “The OC” did). I can travel the world and find that the only thing I have in common with people is that we've seen the same movies. Yes, this addiction is certainly wide-spread.

But I've discovered something. If I don't stifle my boredom as soon as I feel the faintest tingling of it approaching, if I don't try to bury it in the nearest available entertainment, then something strange starts to happen. I find that my mind kicks in. It doesn't want to be bored, either. Almost like it says to itself, “Well, I guess my break's over. Back to work!” And then an incredible thing starts to happen: my mind starts to grow and expand. I find myself generating new ideas, thinking through new strategies, breaking out of old thought habits. I actually find myself growing.

Creativity, motivation, inspiration – it all comes flowing back. Tasks like writing that were so difficult and mundane before suddenly become exciting and full of life because the ideas just flow out of me. Almost as if all I've been waiting for is a break from entertainment long enough to actually think an original thought. It's like boredom is the gateway to creativity. Maybe my brain is so desperate for entertainment that it starts generating its own. Some people say that necessity is the mother of invention, I say that boredom must be it's father.

If you've embarked on your own Extraordinary journey, you may have caught onto this already. We're not built to have everything flow inward, to us. We're built to flow outward, to give to those around us and enrich their lives by expending our own. The crazy part about that is that the more we help people - the more we spend ourselves giving to others - the better we feel and the more we experience being alive.

So that's my challenge. Next time you start to feel bored, don't reach for the remote. Don't dive into the latest video game, or best-seller, or Facebook, or whatever (even a really cool blog that you can't wait to share with everyone you know). Let yourself feel it a little. You never know what a little time spent being bored could spark in your life – it might just change the world.