Understanding Boredom

I do not quite understand how boredom happens in my life during the sacred windows when I should find myself the most creative.

Such a window is open right now. I have some time set aside just to think and write and be inspired. To create something, maybe the next few paragraphs of the current chapter I am developing in the novel. Something, anything.

Here in the home office I sit, surrounded by some really interesting, insightful books. I have Word documents at my fingertips that bear the fruit of many months of observations and hard work. There is a beautiful blue, tree-lined sky stretching out before me, and relative quiet in the house.

And yet I feel bored, with scarcely a creative thought dancing across my mind at the moment. It was tough to even write this blog entry, except for that this space is giving me a place to process the dynamics of my momentary (I hope) blah.

It would be interesting to more fully understand the "roots" of boredom. Its arrival is more predictable when caught up in mundane activities or tasks of drudgery, when one is consciously looking forward to doing something else later in the day or the week. But it is altogether more complex and paradoxical to have set the table for being in the flow zone...and to arrive to dine and find yourself not hungry, your taste buds dull. What is happening beneath the surface that is getting in the way of inspiration and motivation?

I'm a little tired, feeling somewhat sluggish. That doesn't help. I have to be in my car by 11:30 to get to work on time for a meeting. Perhaps that is slowing my roll as well.

But a larger cloud floating above me right now is that, for the moment, I question whether I have anything interesting or fresh to offer. So perhaps I am bored with myself. Not a fun place to be.

It will not last, this quicksand of boredom in which I feel entrapped. It never does. Perhaps if I was constantly in a state of euphoric interest and excitement, my creative juices going faster than I can keep up, I would not appreciate it nearly as much. Maybe that will provide some salve to the disappointment I presently feel that I opened the window, but found nothing on the other side to greet me.