The day I’d choose if Nobody Needed me

Someone recently asked me how I would spend the day if I had no responsibilities, when nobody actually needed me. 

No school runs, no work, no washing or cleaning.

I could instantly answer and the answer shocked the person who asked the question.

It wouldn’t be a holiday. It wouldn’t involve a spa, a city break or a bucket list adventure. 

It would be wonderfully ordinary.

I’d wake up naturally, not because an alarm had gone off or someone needed breakfast. I’d stay in bed with a book for as long as I liked, turning the pages while the house stayed quiet around me.  There would be no reaching for my phone because, in my perfect day, mobile phones simply wouldn’t exist. 

Perhaps that’s why so many of us look back fondly on the 1990s. It wasn’t that life was perfect. It was far from it. But the boredom still existed. Real boredom.

The kind that left long afternoons stretching ahead of you with nothing planned and nowhere to be. We complained about it all the time, but boredom was quietly doing something important. 

It was making space.

When we were bored, we wandered into the garden. We drew. We read another chapter. We wrote stories in tatty notebooks and learnt songs from the radio. We made things because there wasn’t much else to do.

Today, boredom barely gets a chance.

The moment there’s a gap, we fill it. We scroll. We check messages. We look at the news. WE answer an email. We watch a short video whilst we wait for the kettle to boil. 

Our minds are never left alone long enough to become curious. It has become outsourced.

Instead of wandering we search and instead of imagining we consume.

Instead of noticing what’s around us, we are shown what someone else thinks we should see. 

I don’t think we have realised what we have lost. Not because social media is entirely bad, but because it has quietly occupied the place where curiosity used to live. 

If I had a day, I would drink my morning coffee in the garden, have a slow shower and dry my hair properly as there wasn’t a rush to get out of the door for the school run. 

I would spend the morning writing with Radio 2 playing quietly in the background. No notifications. No endless tabs open. Just words, a notebook and time. 

Lunch would be a big salad eaten outside in the shade. 

The afternoon would be wonderfully lazy, sat on the sofa watching something I've been meaning to watch for months, not just one episode but two.

As evening arrived I would make a simple meal, nothing too time consuming to cook and eat whilst watching my favourite soap. Then afterwards head out for a gentle evening stroll as the air cooled. 

When I came home I would sit and make something. Not because it needed photographing for social media, to sell. Simply because making something beautiful is one of life’s quiet pleasures. 

Then I would read in bed until sleep arrived.

No blue light, no scrolling, no wondering what everyone else is doing. Just a bookmark tucked between the pages ready for tomorrow. 

Maybe that is what I really miss about the 1990’s. Not the fashion, not the music, not even being younger. I miss having the freedom to be curious. To stare out of the window without guilt. To get lost in a book. 

To notice.

To wonder.

To be gloriously, wonderfully bored.

Because someone between boredom and curiosity is where creativity quietly begins.