I don’t like camping. Raised a good portion of my childhood without running water or power, my life was camping and I worked really hard to never camp ever again. But my husband and my kids love it so I go. May long is a tradition – our first camping trip of the season is marked by fickle weather and remembering all the things we forgot back at home. We are avid wild campers, which means we prefer finding a secluded spot in the middle of nowhere (without cell service) instead of setting up at a campsite. It’s a little bit hillbilly, but that’s Alberta. The first thing I thought to myself as I sat on our bed inside the camper after setting up camp was, “god this is boring.”
When my kids tell me they’re bored, I always reply with, “Good. Boredom is the birthplace of creativity”, so naturally that was where my mind went. But I didn’t feel creative. I haven’t felt creative in a while now. I’ve realized that after 3 years of hustling to create a career for myself of photography, I am burnt the fuck out. What my body needs is the freedom to do nothing, and for me to allow this. So I focused on being; reading for its own sake (not to get something out of it), writing to better reflect on the phase I’m in (not to generate something interesting to share), and taking pictures simply to document my life (instead of trying to be creative and take a show-stopping image). This is what I learned over those 4 days:
Boredom is the antidote to creative stagnancy and pressure to perform. If you are bored it means you have open space, open time, to allow inspiration to speak with you on a personal and meaningful level. Boredom allows us to think and to feel, to get curious about what internal shifts are going on inside us that we may be distracting ourselves from through busy schedules and screen time. We should seek to open up space to allow in boredom and by extension, call in inspiration and self-reflection. 4 days wasn’t nearly long enough time, but it was the beginning of a boredom practice that I intend to ritualize.
