Gap Time and Boredom

As much as I use technology, I wasn't really familiar with the term gap time.  I haven't read The Shallows, but now I want to read it, after the long list of books I want to get through.  Well, I was listening to one of my spiritual CD's, and the author (whose name eludes me now) said that boredom leads to creativity.

Obviously that was, and continues, to be true for me.  I have my longest escapades when I am bored, and that is when I create the best characters.

The claim made me realize that perhaps part of the reason people aren't writing long articles is because they don't give themselves time to be bored.  We have so many gadgets, apps, live streaming, that if we're bored, something is wrong.  People just can't seem to sit with themselves and their thoughts. 

I was becoming the same way. 

In fact, when I was younger, I was a T.V. addict, then a VHS addict, and now a Netlfix/Amazon/Twitter/Facebook addict.  I still love to binge watch; yes, every now and then I put on the breaks, but when I binge.  Whoo.  Does any of it make me a better writer or human being?  Not necessarily.

I was also recently introduced to Reddit, which many of my students mentioned.  I asked them what they read, and they said Reddit, so I checked it out.  There was just a bunch of random posts and videos, none of them lengthy, as far as I could see.  But there were thousands of comments in some of the weirdest sections.  People were engaging with these random ideas, some of them nonsensical.  (No, I am not joining Reddit.)

That is just another indicator that when we write, it really has to capture the imagination of people.   

So, my writing goal for this week is to spend more time making human contact (that requires talking to people in their face or on the old school phone) and writing, than being on social media.  If I post, I want to at least make one good point.