This is the sixth edition of JTPL Stories: a series of interviews with library patrons, staff, and partners. Continue below to meet the faces of JTPL with our Outreach Coordinator, Aliya! Click Here to read the entire series.
Randy, our Jeffersonville location’s evening and weekend custodian, says he has never been one for boredom. To keep it at bay, he is always chatting with patrons or staff and doing work around the library beyond what his job requires. If he isn’t working, he can probably be found reading a book.
“Getting bored,” Randy says, “is only a good thing if you can put the time to use.” He told me his quest to end boredom started early in life, with the books that his parents left lying around the house and, later, with his high school library.
“Both my mom and my dad usually had two or three books going at a time,” he said. “So, when the weather wasn’t good for being outside and running around expending energy, that’s what I gravitated to.”
Randy read a little bit of everything: science fiction, historical nonfiction, his parents’ World Book encyclopedia. And while the books started out as a source of entertainment, they quickly became an education as well.
For Randy, boredom is just time waiting to be filled with something useful.
“If I was bored, Randy told me, “I’d just close my eyes and grab [an encyclopedia] and start flipping through it. I’d get stuck for hours and not even know it… I just wanted to know more. And it didn’t have to be about any particular subject.”
He is the same today. Randy is like a well of facts and stories that he’s read just waiting to be dug up at the right moment. In his interview, we talked about everything from Harper Lee’s eccentricities, to the first scuba diving forest ranger in America, to the encyclopedia entry for “vision.” He said he owes all this knowledge to the way he has learned to make use of his boredom. He turns his need for stimulation into a chance to learn new things.
Today there are hundreds of ways to fill our time with movies, social media, and mindless scrolling. Randy questions if we get any real value out of them. “During COVID,” he said, “when we were restricted in our movements and so many places were shut down, we got used to a new way of wasting time.”
Instead of browsing Netflix when he gets bored, Randy browses the library.
I asked him how recommends finding a book. “Don’t go in with a plan,” he advised me. Rather than looking for something in particular, pick up something new or something with a strange title. Be open to whatever piques your interest.
The library shelves don’t have an algorithm determining what books you can see. You can find books you never would have been shown in your social media bubble or on the news programs you frequent. Often, they are from perspectives you never would have seen or about subjects you’ve never thought about before. Those new books are often the most entertaining ones when you have nothing to do.
They are also the books you can learn the most from.
That’s Randy’s trick to using his boredom to become a better person. “Libraries,” Randy said, “are the last place you can go to read about something from all sides.” By reading a bit of anything and everything, he makes himself smarter, more informed, and open to new ideas.
That’s certainly a better use of his time than scrolling through Hulu.
Want to try a new book instead of streaming another show tonight? Check out one of our e-books through our catalog or try Hoopla and Libby!