Good and Bored

July 21. 2024

I love a day with nothing on the agenda. I try to have one once a week: a time to rest, relax, and do whatever I want. A sabbath! Getting to take a day to sit and enjoy the fruits of your labor is one of the biggest blessings ever—but having multiple of those days in a row? That almost feels like a curse.

The past few weeks I have had nothing to do most days. I wake up in the morning (if you consider 11am morning) and have literally no reason to get out of bed. I’ve made a point of reading as many books as I can and working out every day (I’ve been doing lots of hot yoga—not by choice, but because it’s 90 degrees F in my apartment). There are a bunch of things I could be doing—I could be studying Italian, writing a book, going on runs, painting canvases, exploring nearby towns, etc. and to be honest I have done a little of all that (on Tuesday I actually went to Verona to see my dear friends Gary and Judy Hopkins, which was such a treat!), but since most days there isn’t a single thing I have to do, I can’t bring myself to feel motivated. I’ve been feeling bored. Cheers to summer vacation, I guess?

I vividly remember this one summer day as a kid: it was hot outside, and nearly the same temperature in the house. I was sitting at the kitchen table wondering why all the blinds were drawn, and I told my mom I was bored. She simply replied, “bored is a bad word”.

There were lots of “bad words” in the Roberts’ household back in the day and I, being a rule follower, made it a priority to not say any of them, so from that day on I rarely used the word. To this day I don’t say it lightly. Because really, how can we be bored? There’s always something to do. But I think the problem isn’t a lack of things to do; I think there are too many things to do. [*run-on sentence incoming*] There are too many things to watch to the point where there’s actually nothing to watch and there are too many hobbies to pick up to the point where we half-learn one and move on to the next within weeks and there are too many things we could learn to the point where the more you know the more you know you don’t know and so really the less you know. Ahh!!  

The world is your oyster! Don’t you equally love and hate that!?

It's like every week when I stare at this blank word document and have to turn it into a blog post. There are an infinite number of directions I could go in writing it, and picking one is the toughest part.

One of the scariest and most beautiful things in the world is a blank page. A close second is a cleared calendar.

I have praying for some motivation. I want to learn Italian, I want to write a book, I want to be a better runner, I want to paint canvases for my apartment’s empty walls, I want to explore Italy while I can. But I don’t have to do any of that, so I’m lazy, and the hot weather is only making me more sluggish. So, last night before bed I prayed for God to wake me up early enough to spend some time running outside in the cool of the day. I know that sounds like a silly thing to pray about, but I know myself and I will not get up just because my alarm goes off. I ended up waking up at 5:45, but promptly rolled over and said, “not this early”, then fell back asleep. At 6:45 I woke up again, this time to a clanging noise somewhere which shocked me enough to get me out of bed. I don’t really know what the noise was, but it worked (thanks God!), and 15 minutes later I was out the door and on a run.

There are few things I love more in life than a summer morning. The sun is shining (but not too hot), doves are cooing, coffee is brewing. Every time I’m up before 7:30 in the summer I feel like I’m at a YoungLife camp or something. It’s simply the best. I ran a few miles and made it home just as the church bells were chiming at 8am. It was such a great way to start the day. It’s funny how sacrificing rest can sometimes make you feel more rested. Getting up earlier allowed me to have a peaceful and productive morning; it settled my soul a bit and gave me the energy to do other things I wanted to do throughout the day.

I’m starting to see that sometimes it’s a good thing to be good and bored. It strips everything down, simplifies your life, forces you to be still, and forces you to prioritize what’s important. Every day, I can choose the easy route (laziness) and stay where I’m at mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually, OR I can choose to push myself closer to the person I want to be day by day.

Through these weeks of boredom, I feel like I’ve learned a lot about God and a lot about myself. I have a few more weeks of boredom ahead, before I start a harvest internship, but I’m excited to have so many blank pages to fill!