being bored

These days, especially with the whole COVID-19 situation and being stuck indoors, most of us are bored. We try to combat this by filling our time with watching dramas, doing 'productive' activities, youtube videos, scrolling through the internet and just generally trying anything so we don't have to sit around and do nothing. Even before this time, I did this too. Whenever I was waiting around, I would be reading a book, doing flashcards (especially when exams were looming) or watching some sort 'productive' video, and even whilst I was doing something, I needed something playing in the background: a podcast, Spotify, anything. I hated being bored. It's much easier to be entertained than to have nothing to do, and from no fault of our own, and this has become a problem. With the internet being such an easy trap to fall into when we have nothing to do: the message notifications, freshly uploaded videos, social media updates, sparkly new k-dramas; It would be such a waste to sit and do nothing. With all my time filled, I never sat still and did absolutely nothing. When my trusty Note 5 decided it had had enough of my excessive sticker haul video obsession and therefore stop working early on this year, I was left suddenly in a predicament. I now had loads of time, and I was stuck (mostly) at home, and I had absolutely nothing to do. 

This gave me a whole week to myself (before my device was thankfully replaced), and by that, I meant truly to myself, with just me and my thoughts. Going from constantly consuming so much content and suddenly left without, made me realise I was uncomfortable with being on my own. Being in this day and age, where there is just so much to consume and so much work to do, it does make one wonder, being exposed to so many different opinions, gurus, personalities - how does it affect us? It shapes our personalities much more than we think; most of my worries and anxieties stemmed from not having enough time to process; I just kept doing. Ever since I was young, my mum was very strict about device usage and television watching, insisting that boredom was a necessity, apart from this usually being met with temper tantrums from my siblings and I, she was firm. Unsurprisingly, most of my family including my dad couldn't quite understand this but my siblings and I lived most of our childhoods without watching television, and I only got my first phone at 15. 

When we (my siblings and I) were young, she never really explained why boredom was important, but recently, we did have a little conversation about this, and I found it interesting. She says boredom is necessary, not because you want to be doing nothing, but you want to be giving yourself space, especially at a young age (she emphasized that this meant the ripe age of 18 too). That's the time when you are finding yourself and discovering the world. You need the time to do nothing and ponder, be creative. The greatest of ideas are found usually on a serendipitous whim, and if we are never left with our thoughts, how will we know how to explore on our own? I found this particularly striking, because ever since I found myself with more and more things to do, I'm more and more uncomfortable with myself, trying to fill in the silences in my days. I've sort of lost who I was in a sense. 

When I was left without my phone for that week, although it felt really weird at first having nothing to do, it was refreshing, in that I was really on my own. And I had space. Mulling with my thoughts, opinions, feelings rather than being reactive to what was I was presented with.  Although after that week, I did resume my daily use of devices, I've tried to be more aware of when I was deliberately consuming versus mindlessly scrolling on Reddit, or feeling like I just needed to be productive. I guess my point I'm trying to hammer home is that what we need is to be bored sometimes and this is also as a reminder to myself. Give it a go: try eating breakfast without scrolling through your phone, try sitting still on your own for just a couple minutes in silence each day. Because in an era of consumption, what we need is space. Not more stuff to do, but space. Space to create.

A few notes:

I wrote this post mostly because of the nice conversation I had with my mum a few days ago, and how I've been seeing a lot more 'stay productive' content on the internet, that kind of made me feel bad about wanting to just honestly take a break. And all the skillshare/online course advertising too! I felt (pretty strongly) that you didn't necessarily need to be doing more things to be productive and not many people were talking about how doing less was a good thing. So I felt I would come on the interwebs and say my piece haha. Hope this was interesting and yea, cheers everyone! 

I have also been recently working on a UCAT video course! If any of you are taking the UCAT, do give it a try and see what you think! I made it as affordable as possible (as compared to other courses out there that charge hundreds of pounds) and there are a few videos up for free so do give it a go!

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