Bigger on the Inside
This month's Blog Carnival theme by Winther coincidentally aligns with something I'd been meaning to write. It's interesting to see how people interpret it so far. Boredom is maligned, glorified, cast in light both positive and negative.
I was a curious, rambunctious child. I would hop from one thing to another, poke whatever could be poked, read whatever I could read. When I ran out of things to do, I devised my own little amusements. The good: I made stuff. 3D puzzles, zines, eventually code snippets. The bad: I drove people crazy. Snipped someone's hair (she cried, naturally). Ground chalk sticks and laughed when someone discovered their pants were covered in multicolored dust. I eventually grew up of schoolyard shenanigans (would like to attribute it to maturity, but I knew it involved multiple strikes to my grades) so I would have to sit with my own mind.
But boredom never came to me as something painful. I like my inner life, daydreaming about random things even if my hands couldn't scribble on anything. If I was to wait in line and there was nothing to do, I would read books in my memory, savoring lines and rhythm. Or I could just kick back and listen to the voices in my mind debating about everything under the sun. If I heard something interesting, I would write them down and turn them into stories, poetries, ...
Wait.
Voices?
I used to think everyone has voices in their heads. In college, I discovered this wasn't the case, and a psychiatrist visit ended up with me getting prescribed for psychosis in addition to antidepressant (which was what I was there for). She looked at me funny and I was pretty sure I looked at her funny too. The thing in cartoons, where angels and devils sit on your shoulders whispering stuff? I thought that was an exaggerated way to convey the debates in your head. Exaggerated, not made up. Perplexed, I sent about a dozen friends a small survey. Many people didn't know what I was talking about. About one-third immediately got it, one of them confused as to why I would ask something so obvious. Of course everyone has it!
The psych certainly didn't get me, as I never thought the voices were malicious (even if they turned nasty in depressive episodes). I don't ever want to lose them, so I never took the drug. The notion that it'd be empty in there, that I couldn't hear different point of views dissect and play devil's advocates with one another, that I couldn't hear pieces of words from random things I read in the past, was scarier to bear than anything else. In my world, boredom is not synonymous to loneliness. You can be lonely without being bored, because even your own mind can alienate you (a topic for separate day, I suppose).
To be able to converse with, to cajole ideas out of your own mind is handy. It's rubberducking without having to speak out loud. To play an idea in my mind, imagining how a statement might be taken, accepted, misread, helps me with my writings. To be self-aware, to be reflective, to be able to view my actions and words through a semi-detached lens and how that aligns with my own values. This is not trying to optimize myself into being a good person. It's my way to regulate emotions, something I used to have trouble with when I was younger. By quelling the heat internally and sometimes vent it out in art, I would find the satisfaction without taking it out on someone else.
Throughout the day, I would jot down random interests passing through, to go down the rabbit hole later when I have the time (this has prevented me from the dreaded doomscrolling long before I learnt the term, and one of the chief reasons I never got accounts in social media platforms). If condition allows, I'd just do it. A web tool marrying MS Paint and choose-your-own-adventure book? Seems like a nice way to spend a weekend! Boredom can sometimes be silence, but it's also anything but. I always have projects lined up, to tinker to my heart's content when I feel like it. Or it's time to schedule hangouts with friends. Or it can be both, call a friend and bask in doing nothing together.
So this poses a conundrum.
My definition of boredom is technically not how I've seen people describe it. Both exploring my own mind and finding an activity I'd enjoy are fun. Ooh, so my usual rotation isn't sending me any dopamine? Time to see what else we can do/what topic we can discuss in there. In this case, my definition of boredom is just an empty passage of time I can furnish however I'd like. Unless technology has progressed to a point where entertainment is pumped straight into our veins against our consent, I don't think it matters if it was in 1906 or 2026. The time and space are ours.
Quiet, rich, comforting.
Loud, garish, exciting.
An unclaimed space, a space with potential.
A space to just be.