Feeling Bored

Not very often, to be fair. There's usually more on my to-do list than I can get through, so boredom feels like a bit of a luxury. When it does creep in, it tends to be during things I can't escape, like a long queue or a meeting that should really have been an email.

My first instinct is to reach for my phone, which I'm trying to resist because it never really helps. What does work is getting up and doing something with my hands — cooking, tidying a drawer, going for a short walk. Ten minutes of that and the feeling has usually passed.

Certain lessons, absolutely. I remember endless afternoons copying notes from the board while watching the clock crawl towards three. Yet the classes where we actually made or discussed something flew by, so I think it was the teaching style that bored me rather than school itself.

I'd say adulthood has more boring tasks, but children feel boredom far more sharply. As a kid, a rainy Sunday with nothing to do seemed to last for ever. Now I'd happily take that empty Sunday — what wears me down is the routine, things like paperwork and bills, rather than having too little to do.