I got lost in thought the other day, playing out imaginary conversations in my head, and a funny thought came to my mind. I was thinking about how wide spread my net of hobbies is. Here is a short list to give you an idea:
- Woodworking
- Video game development
- Website development
- Rubiks cube speed solving
- Journaling
- 3d printing
- Working on/restoring my cars
- Writing stories
There are many more, as I say in my About page, I have a hobby of collecting hobbies, but this list gives an idea of how far-reaching my interests are. And each time I mention a different hobby to my friends I imagine them saying "what do you want to be when you grow up?" Which is very funny to me in my head.
It might seem funny to those that know me well, because you'll be familiar with how terrible my memory is, but I actually remember the answer I would always give to this question when I was a kid. For many, many years as a kid I would always say that I wanted to be a construction worker, specifically building houses. I found the structure of the frame of a house fascinating, and still do to this day. My woodworking hobby scratches this itch from time to time, like when I tore out and installed a new tub, surround, and a new window in the bathroom at our old house, or when I built the wooden fence around the backyard at our new house.
But as I was thinking about this question the other day, it occurred to me that a good answer might be "not bored." Which actually contradicts with my belief that boredom is incredibly useful and important. I believe that the ability to just sit and be bored for any length of time is crucial, and I'd like to talk about a couple of the reasons why.
First, when you're bored your mind wanders, and that's awesome. Some of my best ideas come from when I'm doing nothing, or zoned out letting my thoughts run wild. A random thought will trigger some other idea or thought that I had before and start to make connections that lead to really fun new ideas. If you're constantly entertaining yourself, especially with consuming content, you're never giving your mind the opportunity to explore new thoughts and ideas, and that's a real shame.
I think this is the ENTIRE reason that "shower thoughts" are even a thing. Showers are one of the few times that some people aren't consuming media in some way. Though I'm sure that some day some company is going to come up with a way to keep people glued to their smart phones while taking a shower. But until that happens, even the most internet addicted, social media obsessed, doomscroller has to disconnect from all that for a few short minutes, and their mind is finally allowed to wander. And wouldn't you know it, they end up having some interesting thoughts!
The second point I want to make is that being bored makes being not bored feel better as well. As humans we crave excitement, even though what that means exactly depends heavily on the individual. But, if were constantly excited (not bored) then that level of excitement becomes the norm and it's not as satisfying. I'm sure there is a better way of phrasing that, because it's really a dopamine and other brain chemical thing, but I don't have a good understanding of that or the qualifications to speak on that, so I'll just leave it to my layman explanation. The simplest way I think about it is that the height of the peaks of being excited feel much higher if the valleys of the lows (boredom, not depression) are consistent and reasonably long.
Tying this back to the beginning of this post, the random thought that "not bored" would be a good answer to "what do you want to be when you grow up" was actually terrible. So, then I wondered what would be an actually good answer to that question now. The answer I came up with was "engaged" or "challenged." I often say that the most fun I have is when I'm tackling a really difficult problem. I love deeply thinking about different problems and coming up with unique and creative solutions for them. Especially if the problem is presented to me by someone asking for my help with something and they've stated that they can't find anyone that can figure it out. I love those opportunities.
If you haven't thought about "what you want to be when you grow up" in a while, it might be fun to think about it for a little bit and see what you come up with now that you're an adult.
Thanks for reading. Tyler
If you enjoyed this post or wanted to talk to me about this post, feel free to email me, tylerjpurvis@gmail.com.