Bored

We are attempting to cut back on screens at our house. Which is ironic, since I am writing about this on a small screen and will then proofread my post on a bigger screen so that it will then go out into the world to be read on screens, hopefully many, many of them. Oh, and since, working in television, I spend whole days looking at screens.
 
But I digress. Our cutback on screens has, not surprisingly, resulted in some complaints of "I'm bored." I get it. There's a lot to see and do when you have access to a computer or a tablet or a smartphone. Without these things, a whole group of activities goes away, so why wouldn't a person be bored?
 
What we are learning, however, is that "bored," if handled carefully, is really just a transition to "creative." In our short experiment, we have played highly competitive games of tabletop finger soccer. We have developed time-specific versions of Monopoly, complete with time-specific ways of scoring so that the "counting up" doesn't take longer than the game. We have written about all sorts of facts and talked about what words mean. We have taken "bored" and turned it into "creative."
 
Removing any sort of crutch in our lives is hard. We like the things we're used to, and we like the way we feel when we have that "go-to place" that enables us to pass our time in comfort. What we are finding out, however, is that "creative" is okay too. It may be a few steps out of our comfort zone, causing us to feel nervous, or bored, or both. But in the end, it's a new place to go. And isn't the real solution for "bored" to have as many places to go as you possibly can?