I Owe It All to...

 ... my first jobs, sort of.  Let's start with my first three paying jobs:

1. Babysitter. After the kids went to bed, I got so bored I found myself being awakened by parents looming over me. Embarrassing. That occupation was short-lived.

2. Department store employee, high school. As a floater in a major department store at a time when at least two employees manned every department, I was assigned wherever they needed me. I floated everywhere from Art Supplies (my favorite) to Linens to the Men’s Bargain Basement (not its real name). The job was good when things were busy. But when they weren’t, I was so bored I could only think about how much my feet hurt from standing around for hours, and how much I didn’t want to do this when I grew up.

3. Factory worker, two summers in college. Staying busy – making cloth-covered buttons, clipping threads on Girl Scout vests, packing up merchandise for shipping – was never an issue. I would even change my approach to tasks to see if I could be more productive. But that was the limit to creativity. So... bored again.

Jody and a co-worker
during an un-boring time.

 But boredom wouldn’t be an issue with my first professional job, advertising copywriter, right? Initially, I was too scared to be bored. No one had ever paid me to write anything. Did I actually have the skills? Was I good enough? My impostor syndrome soon disappeared. Things were swimming along until…
The Un-Busy Period
Very long story, very short (I don’t want you to get bored: I know how that goes). But me? I did get bored.
That's when I discovered...
Boredom receives too much negative publicity. 

When you’re bored, your mind is free to think the most random of thoughts. And that’s what I did. In those fallow periods, I toyed with puzzle-making, I fooled around with Dr. Seuss-like wordplay, I wrote rhyming picture books that no one will see. I even turned a dream into a short story.

Boredom became my BCFF, my best creative friend forever.

So, thank you, boredom, for showing me how to become the writer I never knew I always wanted to be. I owe it all to you! 

Jody Feldman makes good use of those boring times – long car rides, long lines, uninteresting lectures – to think some of her best thoughts. They’ve already turned up in all her books, especially the thing that opens the box in her YA thriller No WayHome.