In retrospect, boredom has always had its benefits, boredom at work, boredom in high school, boredom on saturday night, boredom in meetings, boredom in mom’s car, boredom in my car, boredom listening to bored people talk about things even they find boring. Boredom goes well with fear, fear of eye contact in particular, fear of anyone looking and seeing i’m afraid, or bored. At least fear can be exciting. Like you I filled the margins of books with my doodles, or expanded into making entire notebooks of word doodles, with really no substantive notes on whatever I was supposed to be paying attention to. Sometimes I run across these shrunken notebooks and my attempts to be amusing. This notebook was from an event in rwanda, which should be exciting, perhaps. But boredom has a way of making itself at home anywhere. And after all, Rwanda is just somebody else’s backyard, as common to them as your own dumpy surroundings. Eh?