Tag Archives: I’m bored

Has your creative brain left the building like Elvis?

Do you remember what you said to your mom or dad when you were young in the middle of the summer? “I’m bored.” I don’t know about you, but I sure did. We lived in the country. There were three television stations at that time and AM radio. During the day there was hardly anything to watch on TV. We either played outside, read a book, built plastic models or did anything else that would keep us busy. At the time, I wished I lived closer to the city, but in retrospect, I’m glad that I didn’t. I had a chance to be genuinely bored, but I came up with some creative ideas! There was nothing that I couldn’t do. I built 12′ tall rockets, underground forts with tunnels, tree houses, bike paths, go-kart tracks, and my own bobsled track in the winter.I'm bored picture. Get creative!

The typical day for many

See if this describes you, or maybe someone that you know. You wake up, and you check your cell phone for texts, after that, emails, then all of your social media posts. After this ritual, you shower, grab a quick breakfast sandwich, get in the car and then head to work. At work, you keep your email open and check the inbox every 90 seconds. It’s time for lunch, so guess what you do during lunch? You check your cell phone for texts, then emails, then all of your social media posts.social media icons on cell phone

At the end of the workday, you leave work wondering what you got accomplished. You drive home fed with the latest news and music blaring. After dinner, you watch your favorite shows until it’s time to go to bed. You head off to bed, checking your social media posts one more time, then drift off into dreamland. When you wake up in the morning, you repeat this whole process.

Boredom births creativity

To be creative, you have to get away from pretty much all distractions. This requires being bored. Constant stimulation doesn’t allow our minds to have to work with that creative side of our brain.  If we are always spoon fed input, our brains start turning off these circuits of creativity in our mind. The neurons in these creative areas of our brain almost say, “Why should we try to bridge that synapse? You give me constant input from the time you wake until the time your head hits the pillow. I’m not needed any longer.”  The creative part of your brain has just shut down. It’s going to take a while for those rusty wheels to get going again.
A creative and colorful rendition of a human brain.

Can I be creative with a welder?

I started welding a few years back. This past Christmas, I received a book on using welding for making some artsy designs instead of just repairing broken things. I had a few pieces of metal in my garage, but for the longest time, I just stared at them. I couldn’t think of a thing that I could make. I almost gave up, but after about 30 minutes, I took these two pieces of metal and said to myself, “What can I do with these two pieces?” I held them up in all kinds of different positions until I finally came up with something, but it took just staring at them, no music in the background or TV to distract me. Finally, I figured out that I could put a design on the metal, thanks to the craft book. After I created a design, I thought of a use for the old muffler pipe, and voila, an idea had been birthed! This could not have been done if I had any of my distractions to keep me from creating something. Give it a try. Be bored on purpose and sit there with a pen and paper. Who knows, you might come up with something that we will all be reading about!
My creative genius. A welded artwork pencil holder by Gill Trotman