Boredom, for example, has become a collateral victim. It hasn’t disappeared — we’ve simply made it illegitimate. We erase it, fill it, scroll it away. At the slightest pause, we reach for our phones. It’s become a reflex. Boredom is seen as an error to correct, a glitch in the system.

And yet, it’s anything but useless. In philosophy, Heidegger saw ... See more

I want to be bored this year. I want to swim in unstructured hours that allow me to catch up with myself, where I can realise thoughts I didn’t know I had; to let my imagination roam and bloom into shapes only possible without the constant distraction of a screen blurring my vision.