Time, I have it: Boredom

Things with my semi-retirement status are going fabulously. You know those moments when you think, "I can't spend too much time doing X because I won't have enough time for Y and it'll throw my setup for tomorrow morning off schedule?" Well, no more. I have plenty of time to enjoy whatever X is still have enough time to get Y done, and still sleep in on a Saturday morning. I've always pushed myself to do many things, mainly because I don't believe in 'boredom.' Well, I should clarify. Boredom is good to have occasionally, but disasterous and digressive if frequently and in quantity.

During these last couple of weeks, I've been bored--like, laying on my back, making funny, nonsensical sentences, and giggling uncontrolably to myself. That kind of bored. Don't get me wrong, I've also been extremely productive with my paper, answered questions and emails, sent out orders, and even filmed two videos--but it's worth having mental stability to be bored from time to time. When was the last time you did...nothing...for an hour? I mean, stared-at-a-wall type nothing?

Remember when your parents would notice you being 'bored' or hear you complain about 'there's nothing to do,' what did they say? Go clean your room. Why don't you help me wash the dishes? When was the last time you played with Z toy? Manual labor always made me find creative ways to prevent being identified as 'bored'--who wants to dishes as a kid, especially when I'll have 50 years of dish washing ahead of me anyway?

Boredom has a negative stigma. Maybe it was our clever parents who inserted the idea of it being negative and thus we are the creative people we are today. Or maybe it's just the brain arguing with itself about whether or not 'doing nothing' is really productive...and it turns out the latter. Whatever the scientific reason is, being bored gives the brain the downtime it needs to reset, often in the middle of the day. And it's different than napping. Because we're conscious, ideas flow freely and we can be aware of them. In my most recent 'bored' session, I thought of an interesting way to make textured yarn without much work. I hope to have more of these productive 'bored' sessions in the future.

I think that once I get my new schedule settled, I'll be able to capitalize on these 'bored' sessions a bit more: new techniques, more time for practice and refinement, etc. These next few weeks will be devoted to finishing my rough draft and editing it. For now, the schedule is a bit bumpy and I can't say exactly when I'll get new content out to ya'll. When the paper is submitted, I hope to continue posting to the blog every few days and get a video out about once a week, as well as posting things often to FB, Twitter, and Instagram. Thank you to everyone who has supported this decision as it does encourage me to keep going, just at a sustainable pace. No more sad faces..I'm still here to hang out and learn and teach and make yarn!