Being Bored Is Fun and Good, Sorry

The importance of idle time

monica heisey

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Photo by Vincent van Zalinge on Unsplash

Recently I was on one of those budget airlines where you have to rent a tablet or provide your own to access the in-flight entertainment system. In preparation for one day being the most annoying 75-year-old alive, I refuse on principle to pay for any onboard extras and do not own an iPad. Usually I fill the time on planes by drinking two (2) glasses of wine with one (1) anti-nausea tablet and falling hard (hard) asleep about 40 minutes in.

On this particular trip, I had a slight hangover from a birthday party the night before and did not feel like landing at my destination a shriveled husk of a woman, desiccated from altitude and alcohol, so I decided to abstain. A few things then unraveled in quick succession: First, my goddamn wireless headphones died, which meant I could not listen to music on my phone or to the plane’s four weird audio channels of classical/French pop mashups. Then my computer died. Then I realized I had brought a magazine (the New Yorker, leave me alone) I had already mostly read. Also, it became apparent that no one was going to sit beside me, generally a rare treat, but in this instance a small disaster, because silently avoiding conversation with/judging the film choices of another person is at least a form of activity. We had seven hours and 48 minutes until Toronto.

I read all the listings at the front of the magazine. Then I read all the cartoon caption options at the back. I took out my phone and looked at some pictures from the birthday party the night before. They were as I remembered, having basically just happened. I ate some of the little snacks I’d brought with me. I sat back in my chair and closed my eyes for a bit, approximating half-remembered YouTube videos, longreads, and friends’ lectures about “mindfulness.” I looked out the window. I checked the time: less than a full hour had passed. I could not remember a time I had been this bored. Maybe a long weekday afternoon during an unscheduled part of summer vacation, when the neighbors had gone to camp and we hadn’t yet gotten a dog. Maybe once when I took a bus to New York and there was so much winter grit on the windows that you couldn’t even see outside. Maybe as a child, when my mother ran into someone at the grocery store and I just had to stand there watching them catch up…

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monica heisey

write tv like schitt's creek and baroness von sketch show, write words for the new yorker, the guardian, playboy, the globe and mail, and more.