I’m in your inbox a day early because I have a time-sensitive announcement that I really should have remembered to post about last week!

First, if you’d like a digital copy of Dead Hand Rule for $2.99, you’re in luck: you can get one at Amazon or any retailer of your choice (Barnes and Noble, say) thanks to the Amazon Spring Sale and the magic of cross-internet price matching! The deal lasts through Friday, so here’s me giving you an extra 24 hours’ notice.

Second, you may be interested to know that Amal’s short story collection just came out on Tuesday! Seasons of Glass and Iron is a wonderful book, and contains many of the stories I read on that fated day in New York after the Last First Snow tour, which led to me texting her saying, “we should write something together!” “Madeline” is a personal favorite. Don’t pass it up.

Also, if you’re in the USA, please consider finding your way to a No Kings rally on 3/28. Every little bit helps. And if you need inspiration, I was struck by this interview with Rebecca Solnit in the Guardian.

A couple weeks ago while aimlessly flipping through videos I came across one of an enthusiastic fellow with long red hair, who reminded me of something I forget every six months or so: “YOU GOTTA BE BORED!”

An ironic context in which to encounter the message? Well, sure (dontchya think), but on the whole I’ve come to agree with the enthusiastic fellow.

Among the many peculiarities of this moment in human history, must be counted the fact that we are all so desperately un-bored. With a click or a swipe or an invocation of the dread god behind the black mirror we can be horrified, aroused, enraged, nostalgic, jealous, superior, friendly, hostile, bemused, amused, or whatever that warm-sweater feeling is you get when you look at a kitten snuggling into a blanket. Some of the greatest fortunes in human history have been amassed not by satisfying some desperate craving or curing some grievous ailment, but by offering relief from the apparently slight discomfort of boredom. Even back in the Good Internet, it was pretty obvious that a wild number of websites were supported by desk workers who wanted to be un-bored at work. Now that you can take a stroll with the internet, now that you can have the internet in your ears (what a thought), why allow ourselves to be bored ever?

Except… Well, okay, nobody’s bored, but a lot of people sure are miserable about it! Nobody’s bored, and yet, absent some kind of external pressure, it’s quite easy to spend our day not doing things we want, or at any rate intend, to do. Nobody’s bored, but everybody’s fried.

So recently I’ve tried cultivating boredom. It’s harder than you’d think! I would not describe this as anything so high-minded as an experiment: simply trying, when forward momentum fails, and when I recollect my intention in this regard, to let myself be, well, bored, worn out, tuckered, spent, done, tapped for mana, rather than picking up some screen or scratching some itch or finding something to do. I’ve noticed that it’s easier to be bored on days when I’m not tired or otherwise impaired—when I’m at my keenest, I’m most likely to be able to sit with boredom rather than skittering off into distraction; it might seem like a paradox, but on days when I find myself more capable of experiencing boredom, I tend to get more done.

Since I became a parent I’ve spent a decent amount of time thinking about focus and anti-distraction and productivity, because each hour during the day is roughly three times as precious as it used to be—the idea being, if I can’t get myself more time, at least I should improve the quality of the time I have! But perhaps trying to chase off distractions is approaching the problem from the wrong end. Why is the system vulnerable to distraction in the first place? Maybe some vital nutrient has been denied.

I wonder if boredom is how it feels when the brain’s breathing—well, if rest is how it feels when the brain’s breathing, but if boredom is what rest feels like when we’re in motion, like how we side-breathe when we swim. When we’re bored, even for a moment, we’re receptive, we’re gathering ourselves, connecting to our surroundings, aware of a lack of stimulus. We’re starting to wonder, to take inventory. Our minds unclog. There’s probably something useful to be written on the subject involving words like dopamine but I don’t know enough about dopamine for its use here to be anything more than the application of science-vocabulary makeup to an intuition—and you can trust me on that, I’m a professional science fictionero and 95% of science fiction is putting science vocabulary makeup on our intuitions.

But perhaps we need boredom to integrate. Perhaps some of the cognition benefits of exercise and meditation can be accounted to the fact that both of these are pretty dang boring. Perhaps boredom, whether it’s deep imaginative summer break wandering-around-staring-in-puddles kiddo boredom or office-y wait-how-long-have-i-been-staring-at-the-wallpaper-again boredom, is something to cheer. And, heck, it’s a better use of time than social media.

Take care of yourselves, friends. Work for the liberation of all sentient beings. It’s a nice day out; I’m going to go get bored in it for a while.