I grew up in a world so low-fi, it might as well have been powered by duct tape and dumb ideas.

Street hockey until the lights came on.

BMX ramps made of questionable wood and absolute confidence.

Tree forts. Paper cuts. Model glue.

Weekends filled with nothing to do and everything to make.

I’m Gen X.

Which basically means I was born into boredom and blessed by it.

Because boredom was the birthplace of imagination.

It was a sandbox. A canvas. A dare.

And I miss it.

The Pre-Screen Era

Before the world got smart, we were stupidly creative.

We’d pull apart toasters just to see if we could make a lightsaber.

We’d turn a broken wok into a samurai helmet (true story).

We invented storylines with G.I. Joe figures and hairbrush microphones.

Imagination wasn’t something you found; it was something you built.

Then came the creeping pixelated miracle.

First, it was an Atari 2600 from Zeller’s, six years late but no less revolutionary.

Frogger. Pac-Man. Yar’s Revenge.

The graphics were garbage, but the dopamine hit? Glorious.

The Commodore 64 followed. Then the Amiga 500.

Then came dial-up that sounded like a robot dying in a blender.

Then quiet, seductive, whisper-fast WiFi.

And we were hooked.

We Didn’t Lose Imagination. We Outsourced It.

Here’s the thing: technology didn’t kill imagination.

It rebranded it. Monetized it. Streamed it on demand.

What used to be daydreaming became “content.”

What used to be a messy afternoon became a curated Pinterest board.

We still create, sure, but now we do it while doomscrolling, while multitasking, while flipping between 37 open tabs and a Slack message about synergy.

We didn’t run out of ideas.

We just ran out of space for them.

The Real Killer: Stolen Boredom

Nobody wants to hear this, but I’ll say it anyway: Boredom is the gateway drug to creativity.

It’s uncomfortable.

It itches.

It dares you to make something out of nothing.

As a kid, boredom made me imagine worlds.

It made me curious. It made me climb trees and tear apart radios, and write dumb comic books where every character had laser eyes.

Today, the second we feel bored, we grab our phones.

We don’t sit with silence, we smother it.

We flood our brains with so much external noise that the internal voice gets buried.

And when we finally want a creative idea?

We open an app.

We “look for inspiration.”

What we used to dream, we now download.

I’m Not Preaching. I’m Confessing.

Look, I’m not standing on a soapbox made of VHS tapes and nostalgia.

I’m in this with you. I’ve mainlined TikTok like a digital junkie.

I’ve reached for my phone in moments that used to be mine, walking the dog, standing in line, waiting for water to boil.

I love tech. I worship Apple like it’s a lifestyle brand sent by the gods.

But I also know it’s stealing something from me.

From us.

Not deliberately. Not maliciously.

But passively. Constantly. Relentlessly.

And that’s why I’m writing this.

Not as a rant. Not as a throwback.

But as a reckoning.

The Solution Isn’t Rejection. It’s Restraint.

I’m not moving off-grid to churn butter and raise goats.

But I am trying to reclaim some headspace.

Here’s what’s helping:

• Tech-free walks. No phone. No music. Just… trees. Houses. Overheard conversations. The low hum of life.
  
• A real notebook. Pen and paper. Not for planning. Not for productivity. Just to spill thoughts before they calcify.
  
• Staring out windows. No agenda. No purpose. Just stillness. It’s boring. And that’s the point.
  
• Stopping myself from scrolling when I’m between things, that sacred space where new ideas try to sneak in.
  

It’s not perfect.

But it’s real.

And little by little, the static starts to fade.

The internal voice returns.

The imagination muscle remembers it was born in silence.

One More Thing

If you’re feeling stuck lately, creatively, emotionally, or spiritually, ask yourself:

When was the last time you were bored?

Not distracted. Not scrolling.

Bored.

That feeling you used to hate?

It might just be the doorway back to yourself.

Because here’s the hard truth:

Imagination doesn’t die.

It just stops knocking when no one’s home.