The right type of boredom is actually good for you. I have been reading about it since I became a parent. Unfortunately for me, when my son gets bored, something gets taken apart, cut down, dug up, or otherwise adds stress and a crap ton of work to my life. He is crazy creative and motivated but balance is not in his vocabulary. Yeah yeah first world problems...
Yesterday was immensely productive. My whole family worked all day on a project that involved picking up a wheelbarrow full of rocks, putting down about a half a yard of loam, putting the rocks back, seeding the loam, and moving two rain barrels into place while trying to make them aesthetically pleasing as possible. I roasted a chicken and we ate a late lunch on the deck. The weather was amazing and so as anyone who lives in New England knows, if the weather is good, one must take advantage of it. We absolutely took advantage of it! My husband and I even managed to go work on some mountain bike trails with my son after, (see above paragraph).
I am bragging about all this because we never would have done it if it weren't for my "boredom." Stay with me. There are different types of boredom. Sitting around scrolling through news feeds on your phone is not great boredom, people actually get pretty bored with that too but we keep doing it, (the brain is so weird). When I make my coffee in the morning, I purposely don't have my phone out. My coffee ritual takes a little bit of time so if there aren't dishes to put away and pets to tend to while I am waiting for my coffee, I will just look out the window. Many a household project has come from those quiet moments of just being. Sometimes I just daydream, other days, I imagine how nice my backyard would look if we just put a little effort into it.
This morning, the house was quiet, I set up camp in my beanbag with my coffee, and decided my eyes weren't awake enough to read so I decided to listen to a podcast. All in the mind podcast just uploaded an episode about boredom. I wrote a short little entry about Hygge earlier and I am vowing to not saturate my family with my new lifestyle obsession, (this time from the Netherlands) Niksen. I learned of its existence this morning and will be reading and listening up on it in abundance but will keep most of its benefits to myself. Niksen is the art of doing nothing and if the secret gets out, there might be either a rebellion or another tool in my family's toolbelt of not wanting to work on projects with me.
In the meantime, I am going to work on how I can secretly integrate some more Niksen in our lives. Sitting around listening to music is Niksen, (Hello! Record player)!
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| I think this classifies as Niksen |
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