Craig Mod, writing for Literary Hub:
When I’m not talking, just walking (which is most of the time), I try to cultivate the most bored state of mind imaginable. A total void of stimulation beyond the immediate environment. My rules: No news, no social media, no podcasts, no music. No “teleporting,” you could say. The phone, the great teleportation device, the great murderer of boredom. And yet, boredom: the great engine of creativity. I now believe with all my heart that it’s only in the crushing silences of boredom—without all that black-mirror dopamine — that you can access your deepest creative wells. And for so many people these days, they’ve never so much as attempted to dip in a ladle, let alone dive down into those uncomfortable waters made accessible through boredom.
For me, from this boredom—this blankness of mind as I walk past sometimes fields and sometimes giant gambling pachinko parlors—words flow. I can’t stop them. My mind begins writing about what we see and refuses to shut up. That gap created by a lack of artificial stimulation is filled—thanks to the magic plasticity of our brains—with words and more words. Without Candy Crush, an inverted event horizon spawns, and out shoots: thoughts. I dictate as I walk. From afar, it looks like I’m either on a board meeting call with a CEO or am insane. Amidst all of this, in the lulls of dictation, I photograph—people, objects, mountains, trees, stumps, deer, shrines, temples, dogs depressed and dogs joyful, homes well used and those abandoned.
I’m of the firm belief that boredom is vastly underrated and should be a state cultivated by those of us that spend an inordinate amount of time on our devices.
Get bored. On purpose. Often.
/via Molly White.