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I don’t remember what I was going to talk about. I really don’t. I’m behind on my normal fodder, like Andor on Disney Plus, For All Mankind on Apple TV, and Yellowstone on Paramount. I’m three James Bond movies behind the times, with new seasons of Ted Lasso and The Mandalorian looming on the horizon. So many shows and so little time to watch them all. Why is that? Football. There are seemingly endless carousels of football games on TV. Thursday though Monday, college and pro. Heck, our high school team is in the state tournament and those games show up too (Texas being Texas). And I’m not even watching. It’s background noise. I only look up when the announcers get excited. I don’t have the patience to watch an entire game without looking at my phone, reading a book, watching YouTube, or doing household chores. The games are two-and-a-half-hour events that only require about three minutes of focused attention on the action. Truly, an opiate for the masses that soothes something in my monkey brain demanding visual stimulus and never being bored. But for a writer, this is not a good thing. I need to be bored. Being bored is where daydreaming starts, and that’s where I get some of my best ideas. I used to have a lot of boring stretches in my day where my mind would slip away into a more interesting world that would stay with me long afterwards. I’d jot a few details down and from those seeds, grew a story. It’s getting harder to achieve that now and I’m wondering if I have to schedule in boredom. I bet that’s how the practice of meditation started. But never fear, the football season tapers off in December and ends in February. I can stop watching mindless fodder after that, right? RIGHT? |
The Importance of Being Bored
