What I learnt about boredom hosting a Reading Retreat in Greece

When was the last time you allowed yourself to be bored?

I’m hosting a reading retreat in Zakynthos, Greece. Ten women are here to talk books. On the first night, talk turns to how you maintain a reading ritual.

Everyone shares their way of reading. One guest reads a book while she works out on the treadmill for an hour. Now there's habit stacking James Clear would weep over. Another guest said that makes her motion sick, which felt like the appropriate response.

Others read on the commute, with our New York guests saying there has been a notable uptake in New Yorkers reading paperbacks on the subway. Another cites audiobooks. There’s also a trend for immersive reading - where you listen to the audio book and read at the same time. Has anyone tried this?

My reading ritual? It’s always airplane mode, before bed, book in my phone library. This was a trick I picked up when I became a Mum and I couldn’t have the light on when reading. The phone is the easiest way, but you have to create new connotations. The phone has to be a safe space.

So I had to kick my social media addiction, which I did, only to replace it with a news addiction.

So I blocked all news sites by marking them as adult content on my iPhone, which, given the state of the news feels more like accurate labelling. My phone now considers the BBC a 🌽 website. Reply if you also need to hide The Guardian like it’s a gambling problem, and I’ll tell you how.

This is not to say I don’t read the news, but I’m more mindful in consuming it. My downtime is used to read books. In the past few months, like everyone else who is literate, I’ve read the blockbusters Strangers by Belle Burden, Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke, Famesick by Lena Dunham, as well as Go Gentle by Maria Semple, The Lowe Job by Grace Alexander and the classic Outline by Rachel Cusk. I feel all the better for it. More on which books to read in the next newsletter.

One of our wonderful guests sheepishly said she doesn’t have a reading ritual. That she spends every moment reading, and she needs a ritual to not read. To allow time to be bored. For that is when all our best ideas arrive.

Have we have engineered boredom out of existence?

I couldn’t remember the last time I was bored. And retreats are the time to step out of your comfort zone.

So, after dinner I sat in a scalding hot outdoor bath tub and put down the most virtuous and wholesome of all distractions, a book, but a distraction nonetheless.

Instead I sat with my thoughts. They began with how my midwife would not approve of this bath. Or the runny eggs. Or, frankly, most of my choices this trimester. At a certain point deprivation becomes its own pathology.

I sat in that tub under the skies and watched as the clouds smudged the dusk sky, as a satellite breezed by, as the stars spangled bright. Purple thistle lit by the moon blew in the breeze. Kamikaze bugs flung themselves into the tub with more commitment to life experiences than I'll ever have.

I didn’t have any great revelation, but maybe that’s the point. It’s the practice, a muscle that you exercise. Although about four minutes in I did start mentally drafting this newsletter, which I suspect is cheating.

The last morning of every retreat I run here, someone always says the same thing in some version: I didn’t do half the things I meant to. I always say good. That was the point.

Sorry if I bored you. That was, perhaps, also the point.