My earliest recollections of being bored stretch back to my childhood in the burbs on a scorching summer’s day after the parents had kicked me out to play. Play? Play what?

What I would give to have that time back now. To be able to click on that long-ago day in the blazing sun as I might a google slide and drag it to middle of the deck (where I assume I find myself now) and drop it in for a double Saturday weekend. Certainly, at this age, I’d make use of it.

I remember at some point sitting in the shade of a maple tree.

But as me-from-the-past sits bored in a maple’s shade, am I bored thanks to a state of physical or mental inaction? What does it mean to be bored? What is the trick to making use of our ‘free’ time?

How is it that even now, I don’t notice the maple tree?

JM