Why there's never any excuse to be bored.

I wasn't focused on a project that I was working on today. Thoughts were drifting in and out of focus to the point where they were starting to sound like a detuned radio -- all static. I began to cycle through the same three apps on my smartphone, which is a telling symptom of boredom.

My family took a lot of road trips when we were kids. The drive to Michigan was the most trying. There was the distance to contend with, and there wasn't much to see in the way of scenery, just gray interstate asphalt and soybean fields. I filled the distance with my imagination -- stories I concocted about the things I saw, the people we met along the way, the names of towns that flickered by on roadside signs, or the dreams I had in the early morning hours as the asphalt whirred beneath the tires of the Jeep. I don't remember being bored.

I live in a house filled with books. I have an endless well of information at my fingertips. And I have a to-do list that needs to be attacked. But above all of this, I have my imagination. And for that reason alone, there is never a good excuse to be bored.