When I returned from my summer studying abroad in Sorrento, Italy—which was a life-changing experience full of revelations about myself and my heritage—I found, back in America, I was utterly and devastatingly bored.

There were no weekend plans to ride on a gondola in Venice, no trains to see the Colosseum illuminated at night, and no impromptu trips to the island of Capri. At home, I couldn’t even walk down the street to order a cappuccino and people watch in a piazza.

With my days unscheduled, I started doom scrolling. I went from walking 20,000 steps a day to barely reaching 2,000. I knew something had to change, so I tried to return to my novel in progress. I had all this free time, so why not write?

Well, the key word there is that I tried to write. Everything I wrote felt too unoriginal and stale, much like how I was feeling. I couldn’t resolve my restlessness, and my inner critic grew louder with each writing session.

I let go of my summer writing plans with great reluctance and instead decided to get a full-time job as a receptionist at a car dealership. If I was going to be bored, I should at least get paid for it! And the funniest thing happened.

While bored at the front desk, I found myself jotting poems and novel outlines on every scrap of paper I could find: the backs of repair orders, receipts from lunches, and E-ZPass records.

Why now? I had very little time for writing now that I took on a full-time job. Why couldn’t my brain have come up with these ideas while I was doing nothing at home?

Curious about this shift in my brain, I began to take note of when the ideas would come to me. I would be sitting at the front desk waiting for a call and filing records to pass the time. This monotonous task would cause my brain to wander and think about my writing. 

Interestingly enough, there’s science behind this.

Human beings, back when we were cavemen, would use free time to come up with new creative solutions to problems. This process is called lateral thinking, and it occurs when the prefrontal cortex, or our core decision making area of our brain, is on autopilot.

When I was previously bored, I was anxious about having nothing to do. My brain then wouldn’t go into autopilot because it sought to resolve the anxiety first. But with menial office tasks—since I was relaxed and staying present—my brain didn’t need to make critical decisions, and my prefrontal cortex would finally go quiet.

And here’s the kicker: that part of the brain is responsible for judgment. It’s where the inner critic sits.

To tap into my creative potential, I needed to find a way to distract my prefrontal cortex with something mundane. In other words, I needed to let myself be bored.

When I figured this out, I immediately purchased a pocket notebook I’m calling “the bored book.” Whenever I get the itch to doom scroll and stave off boredom, I open this journal and encourage myself to note what is happening in the present moment. 

I’ll notice the technicians with their noses buried in the hood of a car, I’ll notice the rattle of the engine sputtering to a start, and I’ll notice the fluid blend of Spanish and English between them. I’ll write down details from everywhere I go, and they’ll find their way into poems, characters, or articles like this one.

Being physically busy but mentally quiet helps me be more creative, so I’m challenging myself to stay present, even if it’s boring. That means I’ll be folding the laundry without a TV show and cooking dinner without a podcast in my ears. My writer’s brain needs the space to wander!

Even though it’s not going cliff jumping into the Tyrrhenian Sea, my mundane life in America can be inspiring so long as I look for the beauty in the commonplace.