“Cultivated
leisure is the aim of man.” --Oscar
Wilde
The French poet Charles Baudelaire wrote a most
unusual preface to his collection called "The Flowers of
Evil". After writing 32 lines about the terrible evils committed by
people, he added:
There's one more hideous, evil, obscene!
Though it makes no great gesture, no great cry,
It would lay waste the earth quite willingly,
And in a yawn engulf creation.
Boredom! Its eyes with tears unwilling shine,
It dreams of scaffolds, smoking its cheroot.
Reader, you know this monster delicate,
--Double-faced reader,--kinsman,--brother mine!
How
many times have you been bored? With
your job? Your friends?
Your life? Most
people have experienced it at one time or another.
Some have been unfortunate enough to experience boredom
regularly.
Contrary to popular belief, boredom isn't a result
of having nothing to do. It's
very difficult to come up with a situation where your options are so
limited that you literally can do nothing.
Boredom stems from the situation where the things
that you could possibly do don't realistically appeal to you.
This leaves you inactive, and generally unhappy.
Thus, boredom is the result of having nothing to do that you
like.
For many, television provides an escape from
boredom. So do games and
sport and the cruising that young people do in their cars.
Protests and demonstrations offer popular relief from boredom.
The Internet also comes into play as a treatment
for boredom, and perhaps a better one than some of the popular
escapes. The Internet
offers so many things to do that it's unimaginable that you couldn't
find something of interest. 
Many escapes, like television, visiting friends and
cruising the streets in your car, wear thin after awhile.
The variety of activity available on the Internet not only
provides relief from boredom, but also often results in personal
growth and development.
What then is available on the Internet to add
greater spice to many lives? One
of its great virtues comes from offering something for everyone.
For instance, those working at a regular job often welcome the
chance to do some distance learning in their spare time at home, while
most students don't want to use their spare time doing what they do
almost every day.
What do you enjoy?
Most people have a number of things they take pleasure in doing
at different times. If
you're in the mood for physical activity, leave the Internet for the
gym or playing field. The Internet is most useful as mental exercise.
Apart from the many opportunities for learning on
the World Wide Web, other useful diversions from boredom include games
and hobbies. An
interesting aspect of this is that you can learn to play new games and
develop new hobbies without needing someone present to teach you how.
Games
Before the World Wide Web, if you wanted to learn
to play chess, for example, you had to have someone willing to sit
with you and teach you and then play practice games with you.
Now you can simply type "Learn chess" into a search
engine like Google, and
you're on your way to becoming a chess master.
Once
you've got the basics down, you can go to Yahoo's
game page and play chess at any level you'd like.
While you're there, check out the dozens of
other interesting games you can play, including Card Games,
Arcadia Games, Board and Tile Games, Games from World Winner and
Fantasy Sports& Pick 'em Games.
The most popular Yahoo games are Euchre, Spades,
Canasta, Pool, Bookworm, Literati (like Scrabble), Chess and Text
Twist. Some of Yahoo's games you play by yourself and others offer
opponents from around the world.
The ongoing developments in Internet technology
have brought about a gaming revolution involving 3D, sound and
multi-player games. If
you don't have an ADSL connection and don't want to spend a lot of
time online with other players, a number of sites offer games for
downloading and the latest gaming news.
The most popular of these is Gamespot.
The Coffee
Break Arcade has hundreds of free games in six different
categories. Most of the
games can be played online or downloaded for offline play.
These are single player games; and while many are exciting,
they're not quite as exciting as playing against live opponents.
For kids, the
Multnomah
County Library provides Arcade Games, Word Games, Brain Teasers
and Riddles. Like many
games, these are educational.
As the author Leo Buscaglia observed, "It is
paradoxical that many educators and parents still differentiate
between a time for learning and a time for play without seeing the
vital connection between them.”
Hobbies
There are many more hobbies than most people know
about; and the Web has about 7 million pages that have something to do
with them. A majority of
those are vendors selling to the public.
The trick is to find the sites that offer free stuff.
One way is to go to an index of hobby sites, find
the hobby that you're interested in (or think you might be) and click
on the link to get you to a list of sites related to that hobby.
One such index can be found at About’s Hobbies
and Games page. They
have a lengthy list of hobbies like Arts and Crafts, Collecting, Games
and Pastimes.
The Arts and Crafts list is particularly
fascinating and includes hobbies like Beadwork, Candle and Soap
Making, Cross-stitch, 
Knitting,
Drawing/Sketching, Jewelery Making, Needle Point, Painting,
Sewing, Woodworking and more.
If you fancy being a collector, the site has links
to Antiques, Book Collecting, Doll Collecting, Miniatures/Stamps/Coins
and Toy Collecting.
The list of pastimes includes Birding, Cigars,
Freshwater Aquariums, Gardening, Genealogy, Home Theatre, Magic and
Illusion, Motorcycles and others.
The About Hobby Index provides avenues to something for
everyone.
If you’re interested in any of the multitude of
hobbies that you can purchase, simply go to Google
and type "Hobbies" in the search bar.
You can do the same thing for a particular hobby, like
photography or model cars for instance.
If you want to discover more about "radio
controlled model aircraft”, type that into the search bar, and
you'll find pages of websites dealing with your favorite pastime.
Yahoo
also has a useful page devoted to hobbies, with links to Chats and
Forums as well as Events in the top categories, making it possible to
get together with others sharing your interests.
You’ll also find that Yahoo has links to sites
featuring some unusual hobbies, like Beachcombing, Bell Ringing,
Bubbles, Cloud Watching, Dumpster Driving, Handwriting Analysis, Home
Brewing, Juggling, Kites, Lock Picking, Puppetry, String Figures and
Treasure Hunting.
Online Learning
Finally, apart from games and hobbies, the most
useful escape from boredom comes from deciding that you want to learn
something and then drawing from the resources on the Internet.
Two approaches to online learning deserve mention:
The first is to use search engines to locate
websites that have the information or knowledge you’re seeking.
This can involve either skills or academic subjects.
If I wanted to learn more about how to write better, I would
simply type “writing” or “writing skills” in several different
search engines like google
or MSN or AltaVista.
If I wanted to learn more about Middle Eastern
history, I would type that into several search engines, and then visit
the sites that have the information that interests me.
The second approach involves taking courses online.
World
Wide Learn offers a large directory of online courses, accredited
online degree programs and continuing education in 155 categories.
Blue
Web'n is an online library of 1800+ Internet sites categorized by
subject, grade level, and format (lessons, activities, projects,
resources, references, & tools).
To locate other websites offering online education,
type “online learning”, “distance learning”, “distance
education” or online training into your favorite search engine.
For more about what’s in
store for the future of learning on the Web, the article on “Tomorrow’s
Learning” offers some useful insights.
The World Wide Web has so many things for people to
do that it’s almost inconceivable that anyone couldn’t find
something to relieve boredom with well-spent leisure time.
As Arnold Toynbee wrote, “To be able to fill leisure
intelligently is the last product of civilization.”
