Ah, yeah, another POH repost....it's that time of year.
I wrote this in the winter of 2006 when I came upon several teen blogs and the kids were commenting, without fail, about how bored out of their "freakin'" skulls they were.
Now that I know Monsterbox, I would tell them to take a Monster course on "How to make your life more exciting in three days" but then again, Monster is too busy to teach it so...........here goes:
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I am never bored. In fact, I don't have enough time or energy to do everything I want to do. At my house, my children have learned not to even LOOK bored. If they follow me around, I have been known to hand them a towel and make them do dishes.
My classic comment when I find them wandering around with that glazed look on their face is, "find something to do or I will find something for you to do!"
I have been known to go to the store and spend fifty dollars for five embroidery kits. I then make my children, this is gender neutral, sew. For hours. Months later, when they are finished with the project, I go back to the store and get nice frames for these beautiful creations. I have a most beautiful 1Cor.13 hanging on my wall. My son has a verse from Isaiah about wings of eagles with a full winged eagle in a dark frame on his bedroom wall. They are so well done they look like an adult did them. My twenty year old made both when she was fourteen.
So, this is for all the bored teenagers out there who can't find anything better to do than complain that they are sooooooo freakin' bored!
1.) Read a book, preferably the Bible which not only will make you wise but is more interesting than the craziest soap opera on TV. If you don't believe me look up the story about Dinah.
2.) Other good books include The Diary of Anne Frank, Extreme Devotion, Foxes Book of Martyrs, Safely Home, The Civil War by Ken Burns.
3.) Bake some cookies and take them to your elderly neighbor. While you're at it, stay and talk to him or her. You might actually make a new friend and learn something new from someone you formerly didn't care about and thought was an old fogey.
4.) Take an index card and make a certificate for free babysitting for the family of five kids down the street. Give it to the mother and tell her that it has no expiration date. After she picks her chin up off the floor offer to rake her lawn.
5.) Find out where the closest homeless shelter, urban center, etc. is located. Donate your services. They always need people to peel potatoes, make salad, etc. It's actually fun when you know you are helping! If you have friends, especially bored ones, round them up and tell them you have something really fun to do and take them with you.
6.) Read Time magazine. Or Newsweek. Or U.S News and World Reports. Or your local newspaper! Anything other than Teen People or J-14 for once!
7.) Shovel your neighbors driveway. Don't ask, just do it. If they aren't home and won't know who did it, all the better.
8.) Take a walk. Preferably with your mother.
9.) Clean your room.
10.) Vacuum the whole house. Put the vacuum cleaner away and don't tell your mother who did it. Even if she asks. If she figures out that it was you, say, "Me? Humph."
11.) Find a five year old who might like a big brother/big sister. Take them to church, the movies, the library, out for ice cream, for a bike ride, or just stay home and play a game with them. Someday you will be thirty five and they will be twenty five and you will like having a younger friend who is cooler than you.
12.) Make dinner for the family. It can be as difficult as chicken cordon bleu or as easy as hotdogs and french fries. If you really want to bless your mom, go get all the ingredients and pay for them yourself!
13.) Find a good verse in the Bible and memorize it. Jeremiah 29:11 is a great place to start.
14.) Teach yourself sign language. There are inexpensive books about this at Borders or Barnes and Nobles.
15.) Practice basketball skills. You don't need anyone else to do this with. Just a basket and a ball.
16.) Find the crossword puzzle in your newspaper. Start doing it everyday. It might be hard at first. Just keep at it. You will get better and better and it will become addictive. Do the jumble. Same scenerio.
17.) Do the Sudoku if you like numbers.
18.) Do a word study. Get a Strong's Concordance and look up every verse in the Bible that has the word ASK in it. Write down all the verses you find in a spiral notebook. It will make you realize how much God wants you to ASK of Him!
19.) Sweep and mop your mothers floor. When she thanks you offer to do it once a week. For no money. Just because she didn't believe in abortion.
20.) Speaking of abortion, donate your time to a clinic that works to help young mothers give birth and then keep or give their children up for adoption. If you are an adult, offer to take in a pregnant teen and support them throughout their pregnancy.
21.) Take a sewing class. Learn to make quilts. Give them as gifts or donate them to a place that takes in abused women and their children.
22.) Donate your tutorial services. If you have made it as far as ninth grade you most likely know how to add, subtract, multiply and divide. Go to an inner city school and commit yourself to come once or twice a week and help one or two fourth graders learn their multiplication tables. Take a beach ball and put all the numbers from 1-12 on it in permanent marker. Sit on opposite sides of the room. Pick a multiplier. Say six. Whatever number comes up on the ball when you, or they, catch it, has to be multiplied by six. They might actually forget that they are learning. You might actually forget that you are bored. If you don't want to go to the inner city, help your little brother or sister. They might actually feel like you care about them.
23.) Read a book to a toddler. They aren't that hard to find.
24.) Plant a vegetable garden. Grow salad vegetables. Whatever your family doesn't eat give away to the neighbors. Especially the family with five kids and the elderly person.
25.) Fast for one day. I promise you that you will not die. Dedicate that day to finding out all you can about Jesus. Start by reading one or more Gospels, which are just the stories about His life. If you really HATE to read, rent Jesus of Nazareth from your local video store. It is long but totally scriptural.
26.) Start a Scrabble club. Make it multi-generational. You might learn a new word, make a new friend. You might even find out that old people aren't stupid.
27.) Bake some bread. Get some grape juice. Gather your friends together, break the bread, drink the juice, quote Matt. 26:28. Pray together. Promise yourselves that you will do it again next week.
29.) Give your mother or your sister, preferably the one you most recently offended, a pedicure. The full treatment. I guarantee you there will be no hurt feelings after you're done.
30.) Buy two fleece blankets. Cut little snips about one inch apart all the way around. Put one blanket on top of the other and tie the little ends together. Call it a no-sew blanket.
31.) Set up a jigsaw puzzle on a card table. Make sure you do one that you like, not some old one that's been hanging around for twenty years. Ask your mom or dad to help you. Do it even if they don't help you. Glue it when you are done and put it in a frame.
32.) Give your Dad a backrub. And don't ask him for the car or money while you're at it.
33.) Learn how to crochet. If you get pretty good at it, donate little blankets, hats, or booties, to your local hospital maternity ward, pro-life clinic, or homeless shelter.
34.) Start a scrapbook of your life which is suddenly so exciting that you don't want to forget ANYTHING.
35.) Clean the bathroom. Especially the toilet and the bathtub. Trust me, if you consider yourself 'potty trained', you are not above the job.
Hebrews 10:24 in the Living Bible says, "Let us oudo each other in being helpful and kind to each other and in doing good." I like this translation. OUTDO EACH OTHER!! Doesn't that just soooo fit into our achievement oriented society? Isn't God just sooooo RELEVENT?!?
So, here goes the second part:
36.) Take that yapping dog next door, that is always outdoors on a chain, for a walk. Do it once or commit yourself to a certain day every week. (Be sure to ask permission first but I am almost POSITIVE they will say yes!)
37.) Get a set of encyclopedias or borrow them from the library and start reading it from A-Z. A guy actually did this and wrote a whole book about his experience. Just think how good you would be at Trivial Pursuit!
38.) Get yourself a Third Day Offerings CD. Blast it in your living room or bedroom. Let the words just soak into your spirit and encourage you. Once you know the words a little start worshipping. Then start dancing before the Lord. I guarantee your spiritual life will never be the same. You might even get in trouble at church for being too radical. Yippeee!
39.) Get a big bag of wrapped candy. Get a bunch of friends or little kids together. Read Trivial Pursuit questions (or appropriately aged Brain Quest questions for kids). Toss a piece of candy to the person who gives the right answer the quickest. One answer per person only. Make sure each person has a brown lunch bag to put their stash into.
40.) Do a Vacation Bible School in your house. Invite all the little kids in your neighborhood. The mothers will LOVE you and will probably ask if they can send snacks. Gladly accept donations!
41.) Set up a bowling party. Bowling is a blast! After that everyone will want to come to your house for pizza and a movie. Share the cost and keep the movie PG.
42.) Learn one new word a day. Subscribe (it's free) to doctordictionary. com. They will e-mail you a new word each day. Commit yourself to use it several times that day. You won't forget it.
43.) Get an inexpensive drawing pad. Start expressing yourself through art. Don't let anyone see it if you don't think you're that good. This is just about you.
44.) Write poems, short stories, or the great American novel. Reading and writing are food for your soul.
45.) Get a Mavis Beacon program for your computer and teach yourself to type, really type, I'm not talking about the hunt and peck method.
46.) Find a Salvation Army or other used clothing store and offer to work for them for nothing if they will let you have some clothes for free. The Salvation Army also runs after school programs and camps that are always looking for help. Sometimes they even pay.
47.) Put scripture to music and sing a NEW song to the Lord!
48.) Learn how to french braid. Practice on all your long-haired friends.
49.) Take a cosmetology class even if you don't want to be a hairdresser. You will learn enough about hair cutting that you will be able to do your husbands and kids hair someday and it will save you thousands of dollars over your lifetime!
50.) Take culinary arts even if you don't want to do that as a career. You like to eat, don't you? I guarantee your future family does too and they will praise you for your great ability! If you can't take a class just go on the internet and get some recipes and teach yourself. All you have to know is how to read and do fractions.
51.) Get a book, some pens, etc. and teach yourself how to do calligraphy. Someday when you get married you can hand write all your invitations and people will call it an heirloom.
52.) Be a 'secret pal' to a lonely kid down the street. Send them cards, little gifts, candy, etc. but the key is they can't know who you are. Be sure to ask the Mom or Dad first so that they don't think you are a crazy stalker person. Make them promise not to tell.
53.) Go up to your pastor and give him a big hug and a huge smack on the cheek. Tell him you love him and appreciate the work he does. Pastor are people too!
54.) Support a local musician whose music you like. Donate money for reeds or guitar strings. Go to his or her gigs. Let them know that you are available to help carry instruments, amps, etc. People, even the musicians themselves, don't really understand what servants they are. All the hours of practice, alone in their rooms, just to entertain those of us who like to listen but are too lazy to learn to play for ourselves. Remember musicians, and other artists, are sensitive souls. They put themselves out there at great risk of being booed. They need all the encouragement they can get.
55.) Make a list of people you know and commit yourself to pray for them every day.
56.) If you are an adult and you live in a college town, adopt a student, or a small group of students and offer to make a home cooked meal for them once a week. Let them lead the conversation. You will find out more than you want to know about a broad range of subjects. You might even learn something!
57.) Go to your local florist and ask if you can have the flowers that are thrown out. Buy some florist foam (Walmart) and teach yourself how to make arrangements. Once you get good enough and you can make big ones, buy a cheap punch bowl and make arrangements for your small church.
58.) Ask your local bakery or grocery store if you can pick up their outdated product that they are going to throw out. This can be bakery goods, produce, dented canned items. Pass it out to families and elderly. If the store management seems uncertain whether they want to do that tell them that supermarkets all over NYS are doing it. Don't go to the underlings. Go right for the manager or owner of the store.
59.) Join the Chess club at school. You might find that people who are smarter than you are cooler too.
60.) Start a Bible Study group after school. Did you know that it is against the law in this country for a school to prohibit you from doing that? Adults CAN be involved but it MUST be student led. Find a Christian teacher and let them quietly advise you on how to go about it. If they say it can't be done find someone who knows more about the laws in your state.
61.) If you don't go to Youth Group, seek one out and go to it. If it is boooooring, and admittedly some are, ask the leader if you can suggest some fun stuff to do. I'm fairly certain the leaders will appreciate your help.
62.) Get a job. I don't recommend this unless you really need the money because you have the rest of your life to work, work woooork, but if you really can't think of ANYTHING else, yeah, get a job.
63.) Do the laundry. Do it right. Do not put the reds in with your father's white underwear.
64.) If you are an adult, over 21 years of age, consider taking training to be a foster parent in your county. You do NOT have to be married, own your own home or a stay at home person. I know, it is NOT an easy job and yes, they will probably take a child away from you after you have fallen in love with them, and yes, they pay diddlysquat, but it is the BEST job you will ever have and hey, life isn't easy for anybody, amen? Especially for the kid who is being taken away from their parent through no fault of their own. Better to have loved and lost then never to have loved at all. You will always know that you made a difference in someones life and you will not be sorry. I promise. If you have a conviction that the county takes kids away from their parents too freely (this is usually NOT the case) commit yourself to working with struggling mothers and role modeling appropriate mother behavior. Find free clothing and food sources for them and teach them to take care of their kids so the county WON'T have to step in. One way or the other you have the potential to change the direction of a family for generations to come.
65.) Decide that 2007 is going to be the year that you stopped complaining and decided to do something with your life. Pray more, serve more, fellowship more, worship God more, love more. You won't regret it. At the risk of sounding corny, today is the first day of the rest of your life.
