I Think I Miss Being Bored

An overthought, exploration of boredom, overstimulation, and what happens when you lose the ability to sit still without your brain screaming for dopamine.

🔓 This post is free to read — part of the Ritual North public journal.

The Wall Staring Olympics

Once upon a time, I could sit in a chair and just... exist.

Now, if I sit in a chair for more than four seconds without doing something, my brain throws a tantrum.
It starts screaming:

• “You’re wasting time!”
• “Check the news!”
• “Let’s rewatch a reel of a man slow-cooking an egg!”
• “Do you even have a life plan??”

This is the current state of my attention span:

The Lost Art of Boredom

There was a time when boredom was a real place.

I’m not talking about the curated “digital detox” kind of boredom where you light incense and pretend it's personal growth.
I mean the raw, unsupervised, carpet-staring boredom of childhood.

For me, it was usually at my grandparents' house. Beige carpets. A ticking clock. A TV with wood panelling and one working channel.

The kind where you lay upside-down on the sofa until your vision went weird and your thoughts got all echoey. I once watched a spider for 45 minutes.

The kind where you made up stories in your head involving time travel, vending machines, and the girl from school who looked like she could do magic.

Boredom used to be the natural state between moments.
Now it’s a threat to be neutralised.

Back then, boredom wasn’t scary. It was just what there was between meals. A stretch of mental canvas.
And in that space, weird things happened. You’d build stories. Try things. Wonder.

Now? We fill every second before the silence can get a word in.

The Rise of the Dopamine Swamp

We didn’t kill boredom.
We just paved over it with an infinite-scroll casino.

Instead of sitting with a feeling, we double-tap, swipe, and refresh.
Instead of daydreaming, we consume.
Instead of asking, “Why do I feel weird?”
We open a new tab.

Lose 20 minutes to a man peeling oranges with his feet, then you’re sucked into the Whirlpool of Google Searches: “Can boredom cause death? Are dogs happy? What is a micro-facial?”

And the devices love us for it.

They reward us with:

• A tweet from someone who’s very mad about a thing you weren’t aware of 2 minutes ago
• A reel of a cat doing taxes
• An advert for a bidet you didn’t know you needed

Congratulations: you’ve entered the Dopamine Swamp.

It’s always there. It always wants you back. And it has no exit signs.

What We Left Behind

Here’s what no one tells you:

Boredom wasn’t just “nothing happening.”
It was the compost bin of your mind.

You threw in fragments of thoughts, old conversations, weird memories and somehow, hours later, you had an idea. Or clarity. Or a new plan involving a shed and a bike trailer.

It’s where grief lived quietly.
It’s where creativity made strange noises.
It’s where your brain metabolised life.

Without it, the junk piles up.

And then we wonder why everything feels loud, and fast, and like it’s all happening slightly too close to our face.

The Boredom Panic Reflex

Try this:

1. Sit in a chair.
2. Put your phone out of reach.
3. Do nothing for 60 seconds.

If you're anything like me, by second 12 you’ll start hearing faint screaming from inside your soul.

It sounds like this:

“Why are you doing this?”
“You could be productive.”
“People in Sweden are learning skills right now.”

Your brain has developed a Boredom Panic Reflex.
Because it’s been trained to believe that silence = threat.
Stillness = failure.

But what if it’s just... stillness?

Return to the Wall

I started practising boredom again.

Not as a virtue. Not as a productivity hack.
Just... to remember what it felt like to let my brain exist without a to-do list or a feed.

I started small:

• Letting the kettle boil all the way
• Not listening to anything on walks
• Sitting in the car without unlocking my phone
• Toast. Just toast. No phone, no email, just watching it brown.

And what I noticed is this:

It’s uncomfortable. Then it’s boring.
Then it’s peaceful. Then it’s mine.

A Toast to the Return of Boredom

So here’s to the weird, tender, useless moments.

Here’s to dog walks with no soundtrack.
Here’s to kettles. And staring. And letting the thought finish.
Here’s to letting your brain be weird and loud and slow without fixing it.
Here’s to toast.

Because maybe being bored is the most rebellious thing we can do.

And maybe the only way out of the chaos is to just stop.
And feel how much we needed the silence all along.