The brilliance of boredom

A couple weeks ago I wandered into a digression about toxic workplaces. Consider this week’s Nightcrawler another small detour into the forgotten value of boredom.
Last Saturday, our four-year-old didn’t sleep well. So on Sunday morning, I did what many semi-desperate parents have done for generations: I loaded her into her carseat, and set out for a long, pointless drive to get her to fall asleep.
Thankfully, the ruse worked. As we wound our way toward the Oregon coast, she nodded off after a promised donut. I reached for my headphones, ready to salvage my odyssey with a podcast or something vaguely productive. And then: disaster. I realized I’d forgotten them.
At first, I was bored. My brain, conditioned by a decade of smartphone use, kept reaching for the familiar dopamine drip of constant input. And I know I’m not unique in this. Most of us have become habitual grazers of digital noise… which is the polite way of saying we’ve become information junkies, a