not bored

[metaphortunate]

Parents, a question:

At what age did your kid first:

1) Say "I'm bored"?
2) Act bored?

This question brought to you by us noticing that at the age of 2 years 8 1/2 months, the Junebug has not yet complained of being bored, or even acted bored. I'd like to think that this is because we fill his days with mentally-stimulating, age-appropriate activities. And in truth probably some of it is because he goes to day care where he is surrounded by other kids and they really do all kinds of activities. But he also spends plenty of time hanging around the kitchen or living room while we're cooking or feeding Rocket, or hanging around our bedrooms while we're doing laundry, or waiting for buses or trains, or sitting in the car, or what have you. And he never has any trouble amusing himself. If all else fails there is always spinning around and around until you get dizzy.

Last night we were at the bus stop and he bent over to pick a stick up off the ground and announced delightedly "Look! A stick!" then danced around with it. I am going to miss the hell out of this phase when it is over.

Comments

[metaphortunate]

For me, these days, the annoying unignorable feeling that there are three hundred things I need to be doing, plus about fifty specific things I'd like to be doing, only for whatever reason I can't be doing any of them at this point in time, so the time is just wasted; and I don't really like where I am, so I can't even just relax and enjoy the downtime.

It's pretty much confined to certain aspects of my commute and the very occasional dull/repetitive task at work, these days. I'll say this for my life: it's not boring.

[ironed_orchid]

As an adult, feelings of boredom signal that I'm procrastinating or that I'm heading into a depressive episode.

[jae]

I actually didn't mean "my life isn't boring" in the conventional sense (though that's also true, for the most part). I meant that if I'm in a situation that people-who-get-bored would tend to find boring and I have no built-in distractions, I will just look at the inside of my head for the duration of time I need to keep myself occupied. It's never failed me.

-J

[metaphortunate]

Yeah, that's why being in an at least mildly unpleasant and/or occupying situation is part of it.

I miss boredom, though. I feel like there was a kind of creativity that came to me in those fallow periods, when I wasn't quite sure what to do. There's no room for that in my life right now.