Latest Blog Post

In 1986 I was bored.

I can remember. I used to play on a ZX Spectrum but it was, if I’m honest, pretty limited.

I would play Football Manager or Jet Set Willy and we had a plastic joy stick that plugged into the back which was really easy to break.

We’d listen to New Order over and over again and get bored of the album and bored of the game.

I remember Summer days in 1986 and being bored and not being able to think of things to do or people to hang out with.

I wonder when it changed, when I stopped being bored and then lost the ability to be bored.

Nowadays it feels like every minute is taken up and if there’s a spare minute you have to move to the next task and there’s something else to do.

The chance to just sit, to be bored, to have no one want you, nothing to do, no schedule, they would be priceless. I could get used to that again, at least just for a little while, and I could appreciate it and enjoy it and drink it up.

I try to find it in mindfulness and using that technique to slow myself down, if I was good I would do it every day but I’d be a liar if I said I did.

When it works though, mindfulness, it feels like you’ve accepted the boredom of sitting still and listening and appreciating and not having anywhere to go.

When it doesn’t work I am agitated and wanting it to be finished so that I can get up and do something else.

I am reading a book that Ross Anderson recommended to me recently called ‘Silence’

It’s a beautiful little book by a Norwegian explorer who has trekked to both poles solo and knows a thing or two about being on his own.

Anyone with young kids would read that book and would fancy a couple of days at least of walking across the snow not having to listen to anyone else and just talking to yourself.

It might get a bit cold but it would be nice for a while and it takes us away from the madness, the rush, the noise and the fast heartrate of the way we live our lives today.

Blog Post Number: 1859