The Bore Void

Section 01: The Temporal Split

Many of us experience a roller coaster of emotions and feelings as we age throughout our lives, from anxiety to euphoria and everything in between. During adolescence we feel love, angst, loneliness, invincibility and a hundred more emotions. Our emotions and feelings are constantly changing along with the way in which we deal with them. [Willing Control Article] Despite gaining an understanding of our feelings, there exist emotional states that are not as visible to us as angst or love, nor are they as easy to understand and investigate.

Boredom, is a tricky feeling to grasp because usually, people attribute the feeling of boredom to their environment. Commonly, you hear people say there is not much to do, nowhere to go or no new shows to watch whether they say it in person or online. I view boredom as a problem of self rather than environment. The people who think there is not much to do, often, do not do much themselves.

Having a hobby used to be an integral part of growing up before the advent of the internet, and with time, that standard of maintaining a hobby or seeking passion to fill our time, has changed. Because the internet provides countless hours of entertainment and endless forms of information, the importance of having a hobby is not fully realized by many. Being online and entertainment have become the pastime of many, and that is where the boredom some feel becomes difficult to comprehend to those individuals.

Prior to the information age, many people would at least dabble with a hobby. Most of the people I knew in high-school (2003-2007) would either play sports, write stories, create music, draw characters or anime, read or practice some other hobby.  It was not about being the best painter or the fastest sprinter, but merely a realization that having a pastime made you develop into a more rounded person. The people who picked up one hobby or the other would learn new skills, socialize, find pride in their achievements and gain a deeper understanding of themselves and their capabilities. In short, having a hobby would help us discover our capabilities, and those perceptions of ourselves would provide drive and passion through all facets of our life. The people who took up martial arts could apply the discipline of Karate to learning geometry.

Furthermore, as you attained more skill in your craft, you’d gain confidence and patience from your focus as well as insight into different sets of skills. After the information age, and the ubiquity of the internet, many people dropped, forgot or lost interest in their hobbies because they started spending their hobby time surfing the web and its infinite streams of media. With time, people stopped looking within themselves to find what possibilities they could achieve and instead began comparing themselves to people who can already do so much.

The internet is not inherently bad. Like many things, it is a tool and the way in which you use that tool determines whether it is beneficial or harmful. Addictiveness aside, I feel that there is a disconnect between how fast things happen biologically and how fast the internet trains us to expect things to happen. This divergence the basis of an even larger problem.

During the earlier days of internet, when pages took a minute to load or a download took a week, there was an understanding that “things took time”. An accumulation of technological advancements (Social media structure, internet speed, cloud solutions, streaming, compression technologies to package data etc.) changed the form of the internet such that information, and by extension media, became instantly accessible and with that faster connection, I feel that people lost track of how long it can take to wrap our heads around a concept or learn a new skill.

When we scroll through social media, there is little loading time. Additionally, we can stream show after show, play games online seamlessly and surf the web in an instant. Indeed, I remember when Netflix came out, the concept of being able to just “watch a movie” without having to download the entire thing sounded revolutionary; now we take it for granted and begin fidgeting when a YouTube video takes five seconds longer to load than expected. The internet’s speed trains our brain to expect things to happen instantly (or perhaps our patience dwindles as we get used to faster speeds?), whereas our biology can only change incrementally, unable to match the speed of technology. Many people will read about a specific diet or try to pick up a musical instrument expecting that they will see tremendous progress within a month or two; while clearly, that is not always the case. Dieting can take multiple years and proficiency in a musical instrument can take a lifetime.

The human body is fascinating in that it is malleable in many ways. Our behavior, mannerisms, inner thoughts and their manifestations can all be changed if we take the time to understand them. Time however, feels longer or shorter depending on how patient we have trained ourselves to be and how we view the world. When I began getting into digital artwork in 2013, it was only three years later that I felt my artwork was truly improving and five years before I saw progress in my art flow method, and I still have a lot to learn. Similarly, when I started exercising, it was over a year later that I started to really see the changes I sought, and I am still discovering new muscles I did not know I had. I believe that people who spend countless hours on the internet have a shifted perception of time, more specifically of how long things can take to happen or change because on the internet, things will seem instant.

When we scroll through Instagram or view snaps, there is no connection between when things are happening and their sequence, merely what is shown. When we see a person snapping something, it could be the 5th take, yet our brain tells us that what we are seeing is what the person is currently doing. Furthermore, when we see amazing artwork on Instagram or Patreon, it becomes difficult for the viewer to factor in how much time that artist had put into building their own skill set, how often they practice and all the sketches they might have made prior to posting the picture we admire; many people think “I wish I could draw like that!”. Similarly, some people see fit people doing exercises on social media and say “Body goals” even though they are not dieting nor exercising. For most of the population, excelling physically, or creatively, is the result of a daily strive towards the goals they want to reach for a long period of time. The internet can separate us from the reality because we end up looking at the finish line without gauging how much distance is between us and it.

A person who is drawing, will compare themselves to that great artist and think “I’ll never get there” because the distance between them is so tremendous; the people who want to become super fit but not change their dietary habits will think “I want to get to the finish line, but I do not want to run the race.”

The reality is that if you put time and energy into doing things, you’ll get better at them, and so long as you’re getting better, you can become as good, with time. Patience is not just a virtue, it is essential. Our brain is designed to improve on its performance, and for the most part, it does not give us another option; nobody gets worse at a skill after practicing it for a day. If you are interested in drawing, keep drawing and keep learning, it might take you longer than a month, year or decade, but eventually you can get there regardless of your initial talent, so long as you remain disciplined. If you want to lower your weight, work on it daily without expectancy that it is something you will nail in a month and move on with your life; anybody who has an amazing body has it because of their life style, not a onetime diet they followed for a month or two. The list of “Try this and see change in 10 days!” type articles on the internet is overwhelming and all of it puts the perception that biology can change over-night. Whether you are trying to gain a new habit or drop an old one, changing behavior takes time, furthermore, because the internet has been around for a long time, it has already changed our behavior significantly.

As the net has replaced many people’s hobbies (or many people’s hobbies have been replaced by the net), and people use it frequently to answer questions, find information, socialize and do 1000 more things, many people go to the internet when their brain idles. This shift in the human idle state along with the disjointed view on time plays a large part in the boredom many feel, and the reason hobbies begin to feel overwhelmingly difficult.

Section 2 The Cyber Idle State

Our brains are in a constant state of activity. Even while we sleep, there’s a storm going on in our cortex that reviews, processes and reflects upon what we were doing when awake. When we engage our brain in more events and activities (practice hobbies, study subjects, imagine things etc.) our idle state, what our brain first goes to when not engaged in something, will take from all these different experiences and, depending on the day, mood or events going on, find something to muse about. Ceramicists will think about ceramics, musician’s will think about music, Gamers will think about games.

Based on my view of potential time, humans are in a constant shift between memorable experience and transition. When we are in transit, our mind will first go into an idle state, and from there, makes decisions or think about what it wants to do next. If our idle mind thinks about how we spent our day, we would likely have a strong memory as we are constantly refreshing our history in our heads. If you train your idle mind to ask itself whether it is dreaming or not, you are much more likely to lucid dream as you will ask the same question in your sleep. We can think of the idle state as the mental configuration our mind enters when it first disengages from memorable experience, and as our days are constantly revisiting this mental position as we alternate between experience and transition, the idle state has a huge impact on who we are and how we change with time. To change your idle state is to change the likelihood of what you will do.

The brain adapts to the level of activity it undergoes and the subjects it learns; much like a muscle, as you use your brain, it becomes easier to use it further. As you learn about one thing, you are more likely to become interested in similar things. This occurrence might be attributed to the ease at which you comprehend concepts or because learning one thing allows you to understand related things more readily. Reasons aside, what becomes clear is that when our brain is not utilized regularly, it becomes difficult to use it. In this context, “using our brain” is more so about the keenness and curiosity of thinking, rather than the strength of our memory, although memory too suffers when we do not think too hard for a long period of time. When our muscles are not utilized regularly, we might feel anxious about moving a couch because we are not used to coordinating our body’s muscles or we will find it cumbersome because the muscles do not get enough exercise; similarly, when our brains are not exercised regularly, we will feel anxious about thinking too much, preferring to spend our mental energy on simpler things that do not make us think hard to keep our brain in a relaxed state.

The idle state is the base from which we compare potential experiences. When our idle state is to lounge on our smartphones or surf the web, other tasks will seem complicated, dull and difficult. This perception of other tasks occurs because by comparison, many tasks ARE harder than surfing the web. Additionally, the experience of surfing the internet has changed with time to keep people surfing the web for longer periods of time. There was a time when infinite scroll was not a feature on many websites like Imgur, Tumblr and Instagram, nor were recommendations and targeted ads. All these developments, as well as others, are aimed at integrating people into their own, personalized web-surfing experience. Since the internet is used daily, our mind quickly adapts to its usage and soon it becomes normal to take out your phone at any given instance. When we wait in line, we will surf the web, when we wait for an appointment or a friend, we will check our notifications, if a person spends a lot of time in the rest room, chances are they lost track of time while surfing the web. It’s not even an odd occurrence when a group of friends go out and spend their time on their respective mobiles in silence.

Previously, when smartphones were not readily available to the world, a person’s idle state consisted of figuring out whether they needed to get anything done and whether they wanted to do something specifically. Most of the time, people had something they were passionate about or something they were interested in doing at a given time. However, after the internet gained popularity and people began using it daily, and for longer periods of time, many people’s idle state moved out of their own brain and into the cyberworld. Eventually, it became so normal to use our smart phone that we not only become blind to how often we used it, but also to changes that occurred internally from its prolonged use.

Many people now take their smart phone out when they disengage from experience, perhaps to figure out what they want to do, perhaps out of habit, but either way, many people will take out their phone whenever they idle. The longer smartphones are around, the more likely people are to make this shift, unless they actively look out for this behavior. However, when everybody is doing the same thing; when larger numbers of people are idling on their phones, nobody is going to question their own behavior as this becomes the new normal.

I believe that a reluctance to be online when the brain disengages from experience or what I call “the cyber idle state”, has potential consequences on a person’s psyche and behavior over time:

Cyber Escapism

If an individual is bored or escaping some sort of negative emotion or reality, they can rely on the internet to supply them with constant distraction. New memes, more photos, live videos… These will ameliorate their problem temporarily but over a prolonged period, I believe the individual will develop forms of anxiety or depression as their negative realities or that which they might be escaping, is never confronted or addressed properly.

I reckon the emotions we feel within us never go away, especially not when we try to bury them behind either entertainment or substance abuse. If we are distraught from a breakup or a death, the only way we transcend those emotions and move past them is by reacting to them mentally. In the case of a breakup, we reason through it and conclude “there are other fish in the sea”, “it’s their loss”, “we did the best we could”, “I messed it up but now I know better” etc.; in the case of death, we go through the four stages and eventually reach acceptance as nothing we can do in the present can change the loss. However, when our brain constantly goes to the cyberworld in idleness, we can avoid confronting how we feel for a very long period of time, the cost however, becomes that these emotions we are ignoring are never addressed and after a month, year or several years of ignoring ourselves, we are unable to cope with how our emotions are reacting to our environment, giving rise to some form of depression or anxiety. Worse still is that once we have a pile of neglected emotions, it becomes much harder to sort ourselves.

As the human mind can delude itself very easily, a person stuck in this cyber escapism might not realize that it’s part of the reason they feel this way. Just as boredom tends to be attributed to the environment despite being a problem of self, many will construct a lifestyle that keeps their emotions repressed without realizing it is a cage of their own making. We might break up with a person and never reach the conclusion that there are other fish in the sea because we can spend an eternity on the internet distracting ourselves from how we feel, fearful of remorse, regret or uncertainty. Many people report feeling better after getting off the internet for a while or after closing their social media accounts. I believe this occurs in response to them spending time within their brain, deciphering their feelings and emotions and sorting themselves from the inside out. This type of mental sorting is difficult when a person’s idle state has them constantly connected to what other people are doing.

Discharged Focus

If a person is frequently going back to check their phone, whatever they are partaking in will be compared to surfing the web. Frequently, you see people put their phone away at a film, until the movie is not engaging them enough, people will put their phone down at the beginning of a conversation, but fiddle with it when the conversation stalls. Many people even surf the web while they are trying to study for an exam or in between reps at the gym. Because of this frequent checking, it becomes hard for them to engage in a task for a long period of time. Because they can’t engage in the task for a long period of time, their brain never makes significant progress in comprehension. That lack of comprehension then gets interpreted as a lack of interest in the topic or a complexity of the subject matter by the individual. Leaving them more likely to disengage the experience and remain on their phone where they know exactly what they want to do and how to do it.

Consider a person who is reading a book. Each sentence is building upon the sentence before it and trying to communicate and illustrate a picture or view. When we read a couple of sentences, check our phone, and then continue reading, we do not fully grasp what is happening in the scene, or at the very least, the image in our head is not as clear. The impact of the words dwindles because there is a loss of momentum as we move our focus between the book and the smart phone screen, even if it is “just to check if I have notifications”. If we watched a movie and paused every couple of minutes, our brain would lose interest, or would not receive the full impact of the scene. When the brain does not get the full impact of the scene, we are more likely to think “That movie was not so interesting” when, it was our actions that could have made us less so interested in the movie. The human brain is designed to focus on one thing at a time (that is why humans are terrible at multitasking), and when our brain is constantly focusing on the cyberworld as we try to live in the physical world, we can end up finding the physical world less intriguing, even though, the physical world is the real space.

An argument could be made that had the movie or book been interesting, the person would not be checking their phone in the first place, but I feel like people who are not in the habit of checking their phone regularly, find interest in things more easily. It is difficult to compete with a person’s web surfing experience as people follow and subscribe to the accounts that interest them specifically; your web surfing experience is almost completely things you are interested in and so you remain in your “interesting bubble” without being able to expose your mind to topics or concepts that do not currently interest you or to learning skills you do not currently have, but might, if you took the time to engage in either. When we focus on things for an uninterrupted period, our brain enters a different mode of operation. Much like a manual car shifts gears when it speeds up, anybody who has had to work with focus on a task will know that feeling of “being in the zone”.

Simply put, you might take a liking to painting if you try it for a straight three-hour session, but if you keep checking your phone as you try to learn to paint, a part of you might decide that you would rather just watch YouTube videos instead, or that painting is too difficult to learn, because your focus keeps going in between the cyberworld and the task at hand, leaving that part of you that enjoys painting, dormant.

Constant Curiosity

The cyber idle state also creates mental fatigue because our urge to know and check our phone takes a mental toll on us if it is there for indefinitely. Connecting online occupies a lot of time when we consider the world’s dependence on the technology. Furthermore, as the internet becomes a normal thing to use, cyberself takes a lot of mental processing time. In the background of our thoughts, we think about the notifications we might have received, the digital interactions that might have occurred, new memes, new information and everything that comes with being on the internet. Much like chronic stress can eat at a person, constant curiosity becomes an issue when the notifications and interactions are infinite.

Furthermore, as we spend time digesting media in the form of memes, videos or video games, our brain gets tired after seeing so much. When a person goes through several social media feeds, it is like their brain has gone through several museums; intaking large amounts of information and requiring rest, even if you do not focus too hard on what you see, your nerves still spend a lot of time parsing the images. The result is that when people try to relax by playing on their phone or going through their social media feed, they will end up poorly rested. I’m a firm believer that using any sort of screen to rest, except maybe an eInk Screen, does not allow our brain to rest as well as non-screen methods (doing stretches, reading, taking a walk) but holds our brain in a sort of stillness where it might not spend too much energy, but doesn’t really regain it either.

Additionally, because the access to social media and other forms of media is so instant, people can remain indefinitely digesting, even if their brain is full or tired. An example that comes to mind is a person who keeps getting their water-glass filled at a social event. Despite quenching their thirst, so long as they are holding the glass, they will keep drinking or sipping water throughout the event. I think that there is a certain amount of internet that interests people, however, many keep digesting the media despite their brain being full. Many go through their feed, close the application and then re-open it or spend some 20 minutes thinking “I’ll just see what’s next and then close it”. Additionally, as the cyber idle state keeps our cell phones constantly in our hands, even if a person goes through their feed at a given point in time, they will come back to check their phone the next time they idle.

Keeping up with your peers and friends is perfectly fine, however it cannot be the basis of how we spend our idle time because it will undermine the significance of ourselves and our progression. In between the times that we are captivated and on our way to our next destination, thinking about self allows us to continue our journey towards our desires and brings us more satisfaction from how we have spent our time getting there. Checking our phones constantly between interest and idleness is like a person going to a restaurant and constantly eyeing what other people are eating; even if he orders food, and the food is delicious, their constant attention to what others are eating will make the person appreciate their food less. In the case of life, it becomes that after we have had fun doing something, we go to our phones to see how other people are having fun, and what they are doing. Then, before long, it seems like what we had done has long passed and we are bored again. When we don’t go to our phones in between, we maintain the energy from our memorable experiences and utilize it to do other things that might interest us; by not looking at another person’s day so frequently, we maintain our own momentum.

There are other downsides to the cyber idle state, and I find that it can hinder many people from picking up a new hobby or progressing their skills as they are distracted from difficulty, can only partially focus when they attempt to and are longing to get back to cyberspace when disengaged from experience; the combination of these inner forces traps a person within their own cyber prison.

The cyber idle state is not the only cause of boredom, but in 2018 I think it is a significant contributor to the problem, especially when the person does not have a hobby. When our minds are constantly tangled up in what is happening online and what other people are doing and where they are going, we end up separating the feedback of our actions, achievements and satisfaction, and instead focus on other’s actions, other’s achievements and other’s satisfaction, making us feel bored.

Section 03: Boredom

As mentioned before, I view boredom as a problem of self. In a sense, boredom is a rejection of the possibilities that exist within one’s self. To be bored is to be dissatisfied with the options you have before you in terms of how you can choose to spend your time. The fastest way to change those options is to expose yourself to new experiences so that new choices can be taken as you expand your possibilities.

Many people go for new Entertainment when they think about new experiences, but I find that relying solely on entertainment will never fill the gap that boredom creates within an individual; to eradicate boredom, I recommend people tap into any form of imagination. Relying on entertainment to close the gap of boredom means that you will not only be reliant on entertainment for having fun, but will also continue to consume more entertainment, indefinitely. You’ll be doing fine while you are watching your movies, TV shows or playing Video games, but once you run out of those options, or they’re no longer available to you, you’ll find yourself bored and looking for more things to go through.

TV shows specifically consume a lot of time as the standard TV show episode is around 40 min to an hour and the seasons go on in parallel, and endlessly. The releases are scheduled so that a week after one is done, another begins, and the people who spend time following all these different shows could spend an entire year watching one show then the other, then the other, only to find out that it is their birthday again and they have not been doing much for the last year, or three. If you want to watch a show or two or even five it is perfectly fine, same thing with playing multiple video games or browsing YouTube for hours in a given day. Entertainment can expose us to new ideas we would not have thought of, but if we ONLY spend our time digesting entertainment to get new ideas, we will lose interest in thinking, and it is precisely the love of thinking that eliminates boredom from an individual. the goal is to get your brain to recognize the times that you are not giving yourself attention in favor of tending to these different forms of entertainment.

Furthermore, as many people think of “fun” as “entertainment”, their imagination does not get enough exercise and they become dependent on the entertainment for fun. Many people live a life in which they work, come home and watch or partake in some form of entertainment. As a person who has been playing video games for much of my life, I know that reality of going to my desktop, booting up a game and trying to find a match online before my brain can think about whether that is what I want to do right now or not. Once it becomes boring though, you need to delve into your passion or inner creativity.

When you can create your own fun from your imagination, you begin to transcend that need for an external source and take hold of your happiness. Imagination here is getting enjoyment from the process of mental creation. Instead of being happy Game of Thrones took a certain turn, you become happy because you have thought of a new character yourself in a story you are writing. You took the time to draw the hand from an angle you have never drawn before; those achievements and advancements in your brain’s capacity will not keep you entertained but will occupy your mind with processes that will alleviate your boredom; more so as you progress the skill. The issue, however, becomes commitment to learning a skill and retaining your focus as you are trying to learn the skill you want to learn. Divided attention will not get you far when it comes to writing a novel or learning how to draw a hand. The good news is that the further you get into a subject, the more you draw or the better you get at playing a musical instrument, the more fun you will have doing it. So, keep up the effort once you have set a destination and soon, you will find that you can entertain yourself indefinitely, and you will become more proficient as well.

The reason many remain bored is that they do not have hobbies and get into the habit of using their cell phones regularly. As their perception of time distorts from seeing others online, they struggle to maintain their path towards their goals when they decide to try drawing or making music. Development is expected at a faster rate because of the internet. Because that development is not always feasibly achievable in the time frame imagined, many get unmotivated from their perceived lack of progress. Additionally, the change in idle state further hinders the speed at which people can make progress, the effort they end up putting and how they feel daily. Due to a distortion in understanding of how things operate, as well as a perception of difficulty from their impaired attempts, the individual becomes bored and their newly formed habits keep them in that apathetic space.

I view boredom as a major problem because boredom acts as a gateway state into abnormal behavior. The bored individual not only suffers silently, but chronically as well, because they fail to recognize the source of the problem. Furthermore, when you spend time on the regular unsure about what you want to do, where you want to go, whether you want to see people or not and why you feel this way, you become lethargic, lonely, apathetic or confused, resulting in what I call “behavioral flailing”.

Behavioral flailing occurs when a bored individual will do something they do not usually do, in the hopes of discovering something that will entertain them or bring them pleasure. I personally know people who picked up smoking cigarettes as a habit from being bored. Some people will zip through traffic, take drugs, get into fights, steal or gamble because they are bored. Boredom causes restlessness over time and that is why learning how to counter boredom is essential to finding inner harmony if you are bored.

Another consequence of being bored is that you are more likely to become interested in trivial things. Because the mind does not want to be fatigued, apathetic or stressed, people will try to care about anything in the hopes that it will feel better than caring about nothing. This is part of the reason that behavioral flailing occurs, but it is also the reason that chronic boredom distorts a person’s perspective. With enough time, your mind becomes invested in things your default mind would not care about, and this burden of falsely caring about pointless things can distract the person from what would truly make them happy.

Self-motivation is the opposite of boredom. The bored individual cannot cope with their own thoughts and emotions or viable possibilities while a self-motivated person requires nothing but their thoughts, emotions and possibilities to maintain their psyche and enthusiasm. The more self-reliant our minds can become, the better off we will be, not only to ourselves, but also to our peers. Success whether in the work place, socially or personally is much more likely when the individual can fare well on their own. Inversely, because a bored person becomes much more dependent on others to maintain emotional and mental poise, boredom can thwart success in the work place, at social gatherings and hinder personal achievement.

Self-motivation is something that takes time to construct, much like developing a new habit takes time, restructuring your point of view takes even longer. I will expand on self-motivation in the future.

A hobby is not so much something that a person has to love doing from the get-go, as much as it is a form of exploration for the individual. Typically, people think that everybody who has been drawing has loved it from day one, but the truth can be quite different. Some competent programmers start in their 40’s and some people hate a sport until they get better at it. Additionally, many focus on how practicing a hobby requires a lot of time and effort when really, one merely needs to explore how it feels to engage in a certain kind of activity and continue with it if they enjoy it. You might not be a painter, but if the idea of painting is interesting, try it out properly, making sure you are really occupied with how it works and what skills you need to learn to get better at it. A similar thing can be said about virtually any hobby from sports to cooking. Moreover, remember not to noptimize when you decide what you want to experiment with.

One needs to recognize that boredom is not something that goes away when ignored, nor is it something that can be hidden behind entertainment. Boredom is a dichotomy between the way a person is living their life and the way they want to live their life. The human imagination works like a dynamo running on a thought current; as you allow thoughts to move through and drive your artistry, you begin to synthesize and enjoy the process more. By providing any hobby with time, commitment and focus, you will realize that doing anything is more fun than being bored.

You just need ask yourself…

“What do I want to do?”