{"id":2557,"date":"2008-08-05T09:36:20","date_gmt":"2008-08-05T14:36:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/?p=2557"},"modified":"2008-08-05T09:36:20","modified_gmt":"2008-08-05T14:36:20","slug":"the-healing-power-of-boredom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/the-healing-power-of-boredom\/","title":{"rendered":"The Healing Power of Boredom"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My friend and poet, Robert practiced a form of industry distinctly different from that of his wife. Sandy was and is a 110% person, active at the fullest while she is awake and prolly when she is asleep as well. Theirs was a marriage of opposites in which each struggled to understand the other.<\/p>\n<p>One beautiful spring day, I called Robert to see if he wanted to hear a writer who was in town that night.<\/p>\n<p>Sandy answered the phone. She was extremely anxious and worried. &#8220;Robert is in the backyard in the sun and he hasn&#8217;t moved in an hour! He won&#8217;t answer when I call him! I&#8217;m afraid to go out and touch him!&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>Just tell him I&#8217;ll looking for a friend to go hear Bill Merwin read at Duke, sez I.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s popped up!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Robert picked up the phone. Sandy was chattering and scolding him in the background. &#8220;Sandy, she is lovely and lively but she can&#8217;t appreciate the healing power of boredom,&#8221; he said sleepily.<\/p>\n<p>In today&#8217;s NYTimes Science, the understanding and appreciation of boredom is briefly explored in an interesting article by Bennett Carey <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/08\/05\/health\/research\/05mind.html\">&#8220;Boredom May Let the Brain Recast the World in Productive, Creative Ways&#8221;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My friend and poet, Robert practiced a form of industry distinctly different from that of his wife. Sandy was and is a 110% person, active at the fullest while she is awake and prolly when she is asleep as well. Theirs was a marriage of opposites in which each struggled to understand the other. One [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2557"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2557\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2558,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2557\/revisions\/2558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}