Girlbooker's Tea and Toast

Readers of this blog will know that I have been looking for my ‘forever job’ for a few months now. Although I am currently working, it isn’t full time, so I have been getting into the groove of  a slower pace. Yet I am surprised at how busy life still feels. A few reflections on what that so called slower pace looks like. Life is simpler. Because I don’t have money to splash around, I am conscious of not spending unnecessarily. Apart from a couple of times, this has generally made life a whole lot simpler. I am spending way less time agonising over what to buy, how much to spend and whether I need one or two of something. The default answer is ‘no’ and it saves a lot of mental energy. When I do spend money, I really relish it as something special, even if it’s just a muffin as well as a coffee . I’m also doing quieter things, like staying home and reading, and the extra time to read has been such a beautiful gift. I have read more in the last six months than I have in the pre...

Against the backdrop of the cafe’s low intensity weekday bustle, I had one of those wonderful, soul affirming catch ups with an old and dear friend. She’s a teacher, and we talked about how technology is changing so many things for students (and therefore teachers) these days. One of the surprising things we discussed was the importance of boredom. In particular, the necessity of boredom for creativity, and also for social as well as cognitive development.  Now that I’ve used a few big words in a row, I’ll try and explain what I mean like a normal person. Creativity only comes when we are backed into a corner and have nothing else to do except try to entertain ourselves. If you have a smart phone handy then you can easily use that to alleviate your boredom, but that means you don’t learn the skills to entertain yourself in any other way. You don’t invent games, ideas or coping mechanisms. The extension of this is that learning how to cope with boredom is great practise for hig...