A Penny for Your Thoughts

Tonight, I get the child to bed (or so I thought) and I get into the shower and when I get out, I find the child awake and up and the wife in bed. Essentially, backwards of how things should be. I should have a sleeping child and an awake wife.

First, I steer the child back into the general direction of her bed and then I go into our bedroom and ask BW why she's in bed?

"I'm bored", she tells me.

Bored? How can you be bored? It took me twice as long to make the bed tonight because the child found a penny somewhere in the house and it was a full-on event. I answered more questions and played more games about this penny:

"Hey Dad,Why is it so dark?"

"Hey Dad, it spins! Did you know that?"

"Hey Dad, I just found another penny!"

Hey Dad "Make a wish"

(I wished for her to go to bed)

The questions just kept coming. I finally did manage to get the bed made, even if it did take me twice as long and know we know all about pennies.

So my repsonse to BW when she told me she was bored was:

"How can you be bored? You have a $500 iPad that has the entire world at your fingertips"

I mean really, if a 5-year-old can have just as much fun with 2 cents she found on the floor than she can at Disney on ice , surely you can find something to do to keep yourself entertained.

Here's a few suggestions for Boredom:

Start a newsletter! You get to write every day and hope to build an audience over time. You know a lot of stuff about a very niche topic. Share it!

Heck, I don't know a thing about parenting and I started a newsletter. I have an audience and everything!

Don't want to write? How about reading? Ever hear of Wikipedia? I know, you can't take it as gospel, but I bet you could learn a thing or two. I have read all about the pencil, the jos louis history or how the silicon wafer came to be that is powering the thing that you're holding in your hand.

Or, while you are waiting for your new needlepoint kit to show up from Amazon learn about the history of it. You like history!

The internet isn't just about Facebook and Amazon. It's about learning and connecting to people. It's the fact that you don't need permission to start. Start learning or creating or expanding your horizons now

Heck, there are so many rabbit holes of knowledge just a few clicks away. I just don't understand bored.

Fighting boredom doesn't have to mean being online either. Take up drawing. One day you could be this good:

You won't become an overnight success with your drawing but over time you get better. The artist of the drawing you see above took 5 years to get this good. Success wasn't born overnight you know.

Meanwhile, the child never seems to be bored. The toys get strewn around and played with and the cleaning up is a little iffy, but today when I came home, I was greeted with bread and chocolate cookies made out of play doh. Today she has painted, gone over to her friends and played there, played outside alone in the driveway with a stick singing to herself. And then there's the penny - that was a good half hour of entertainment. Last I saw her, she was in bed singing to her stuffed animal. She was entertained from start to finish today.

How about cleaning? There's always something that needs a tidy. God there's so much here to do I can't even start writing it down and I'm getting heart palpitations just thinking of the home improvements that could happen.

YouTube ! has lessons on anything and everything you could possibly want to know about. I don't call it YouTube University for nothing. You could probably learn to program with YouTube for free, or needlepoint!

Heck, if you're really bored watch TV! We never have the TV on because there's so much stuff going on who has time or the energy to invest into a series or show? But if that's the only thing you can think of I suppose you could. It's not my idea of entertainment but it could be yours.

I have just never understood "I'm bored". I mean there's so much to learn and do and we only have so much time on this planet to do it. The possibilities are endless.

Just. Do. Something.

Until next time,

TH and Co.