It’s a dream come true, having a novel published.  Ever since I was a kid, I knew that I wanted to write.

But listen: It never would have happened if I hadn’t spent years being bored.

For instance.  When I was nine years old, I started cranking out a weekly newspaper.  It had a circulation of 5: my mom, my dad, my two brothers and me.  It looked like this:

Why did I write this weekly rag?  Because I was bored!  We didn’t have a computer or the internet back then, so I had to write the whole thing out by hand.

Not many news stories happened inside our house, so I had to make most of them up.

There was a big cloud of smoke and the robbers were gone!!!!!

In addition to being a budding journalist, I also wanted to work in radio.  One Christmas, Santa Claus brought me a toy record player.  I immediately constructed a make-believe radio station in our basement.  I named the station C.H.O.W., and to my family’s immense pleasure I spun a lot of records by Supertramp, the Bee Gees, the Electric Light Orchestra, and yes, the Carpenters.

I set the radio station up beneath the hot air vent, so that the music would carry all through the house.  I had to yell so everyone could hear me introducing the songs.

That changed when I got another present for my birthday:

Mr. Microphone turned me into a REAL broadcaster.  The signal carried ten metres in all directions, so you could hear me as far away as Mom and Dad’s bedroom (if you tuned your radio to 90.1 FM)!  I hosted a weekly chart show, and semi-regular newscasts in which I read the made-up news stories I’d written in the Weekend Household Paper.

Why am I telling you this?  Because sometimes you may feel bored.  I hope you do, because BOREDOM IS THE BEST THING EVER!  If I hadn’t been bored as a kid, I never would have written that newspaper, or set up that radio station.  And if I hadn’t done that, I might not be an author or a radio producer today.

So don’t be afraid of getting bored.  Instead, use that boredom to figure out what it is you love to do.  If you’re lucky, later on, you won’t have to chase after your dream career.  Instead, maybe it’ll come chasing after you.