Ever read a headline or find out about a new trend or event and, even though it's new to you, it seems so familiar, so natural, so well-suited to your brain-space, that it's as if someone dug deep into your psyche and plucked out some remote nugget of truth that was quietly germinating inside you all along?
Well, that's exactly how I felt when I saw the story "Boredom Enthusiasts Discover the Pleasures of Understimulation" in the WSJ. That's it! I thought. Don't hide your boredom, or worse, pretend it isn't there. Embrace it. Dive into the bottom of the boredom wreck and sit a spell. When I was a teenager, I would often remark during yet another [summer spent working on a farm/painting a house/refinishing hardwood floors/cleaning out a barn] that I was bored. So bored. Bored out of my skull. Dull with boredom, sick with boredom, lulled into a state of numbness with boredom. As such, I'm well-acquainted with the slew of etiquette-related advice sure to come the way of the bored upon the (ill-advised) admission of this Big Bad Syndrome.
"Then go do something," someone inevitably says. "If you're bored, you're boring," someone has told me. "Admitting you're bored is like admitting you have no imagination," I've also been scolded. Not true!
