The hours you spent bored at sixteen were still hours of your life. Bored is fine. Wasted on purpose is different.

Boredom has a worse reputation than it deserves. An empty afternoon is where most people get their odd ideas, pick up a guitar, or finally go outside. The problem is not quiet time but the deliberate numbing kind, where you know you are hiding from something and keep going anyway. Those two feel similar from the inside and end up in very different places.

Next time an hour opens up, let it stay genuinely empty for ten minutes before you reach for anything. Notice what you want to do when nothing is pulling at you. That answer is worth having.