“…thinking is not wasted time. There are some obvious time wasters, such as licentious living, drunkenness, adultery, all the things Paul warns us about. A more subtle time waster is being bored. Jesus was never bored. We can pray, standing in line at the supermarket. Or we can be lost in awe at all the people around us, their lives full of glory and tragedy, and suddenly we will have the beginnings of a painting, a story, a song.” Madeleine L’Engle Walking on Water
I don’t understand boredom. In fact, it’s hard to fall asleep at night because I can’t shut off the ongoing diatribe in my brain. If I’m not constructing my work-in-progress, I’m trying to put an organized spin on all I have to do the following day. There’s so much to think about, I don’t have enough time to get all of my thinking finished. And the blessing of soaking up life, in all of it’s “glory and tragedy” only adds more tinder to the fires of inspiration. There are fresh ideas waiting to be plucked every day. Sometimes I think I might pop, if I stuff one more notion in my noggin.
This little quote from ML’E gave me some needed encouragement. In the midst of a highly creative and busy season in my life, I can feel guilty for not tending to the more mundane details. Sometimes it helps to know we aren’t the only ones “made this way.” When I see other’s that are more scheduled, disciplined, and (outwardly) productive, I can play a formidable game of self-comparison.
Turns out, my chaotic thoughts are actually a good thing!
Though there’s a deeper, underlying message to ML’E’s statement, this is what I needed to hear, as it applies to me today. And, since I have a lot of book editing to do, I am going to make this short and sweet, lest you become bored with this post 😉
You have things to do too, right? Well, far be it from me to keep you from your creative productivity!
I have a sneaking feeling that those of you that bother to cruise the blog circuit aren’t likely to get bored easily, either. Not because blogs (especially mine) are so fabulously entertaining and educational that you couldn’t possible become apathetic . . . but because bloggers, and blog readers, are highly creative people as well.
Am I right? Are you, like me, too busy to become bored? If you have a tendency toward boredom, how do you fight back?
Metallica has a line in one song the says, “boredem comes from a boring mind”. Sometimes I feel bored. Or I used to. Then one day I realized I didn’t feel bored, I really was just trying to decide what I wanted to do. I was using boredom to describe the idea that I didn’t want to right, I wanted to read. I thought I was bored with writing, but really I wasn’t, I was just not ready to write, right then. 🙂 I think being bored would be nice once in a while. HAHA!
This quote my L’Engle is fabulous. I’ve often felt this way about people who describe living in the suburbs as boring. You’re just not living life if you think this is boring. 🙂 Good article! Now back to editing!
Yes, that makes sense. I do get tired of one thing but i don’t lack ideas to move on to something else! I’m sure you don’t either. You certainly don’t run out of blig ideas!
No, I don’t ever run out of ideas. I wish sometimes that I did just so I could feel caught up. I always seem to have more stories in my head than I have time to write them.