In Praise of Boredom

For anyone who needs a reason to log out for a while.

I’m deep in the weeds this week — shooting, editing, chasing deadlines before I disappear into the woods for a three-day backpacking trip with friends this weekend.

But before I go offline, I wanted to share this panel conversation I took part in last year.

Full transparency: I haven’t listened back to the whole thing myself (I can barely keep up with my own thoughts these days, let alone stuff I said last year) — but I do remember it being an enriching, honest conversation about making work, staying creative, and staying sane.

Around this point, I launch into how deleting social media gave me the mental room to make what I still consider my most creative and gratifying work (King Coal). I stand by this: inspiration (from social media or the internet) is useful only if you let it breathe when the knob is turned off. Run with it. Turn off the channels.

Social media is built to convince us we’re not doing enough. So we keep grazing for more ideas, instead of tending to the one right in front of us. Documentary filmmaking is slow. Sometimes it’s painfully boring. But I believe, a high tolerance for boredom is a gift.

I even talk about how I gently force my son to listen to the radio sometimes — no demanding/skipping to “I Can Fly” on the Peter Pan soundtrack. It’s my philosophy that an on-demand life shouldn’t be our normal all the time.

Anyway — here’s the whole conversation with these brilliant filmmaking ladies. I hope you find a spark in it — and maybe, permission to turn something off for a while.

More soon — after the woods.