Your attention, please
1
YOUR ATTENTION, PLEASE
Longtime readers know of my perennial struggle against the siren song of the infinite entertainment the internet provides. I do pretty well, usually. I read. I bake, cook, eat, play piano. I take voice lessons just for fun. I play and garden and lay in the sun. All without being near a device. (Well, the voice lessons are virtual, obviously, because you can’t be singing in someone’s face when they’re not in your bubble.)
And yet.
The siren song is strong.
As the pandemic unfolded in my community over a year ago, my mind sought facts, anything that would soothe my fears. I refreshed news sites and COVID trackers obsessively, seeking truth, seeking answers.
Now, a year+ in, my mind has adjusted to this quarantined life, and it feels normal. But so does my relentless search for information. And that’s what I’m going to talk about—the normalization of the obsessive refresh.
My favorite areas of the internet (centered around, for example, the time-well-spent movement) remind me that my attention is mine to give and mine to be taken, that which is drawn slowly, stealthily toward ideas, pictures, words, and information that rattles around in my mind, that which takes up space, adding nothing, draining everything, leaving me—when I take a moment to consider my feelings—stressed and overloaded.
That desperate information-seeking of the early pandemic has blossomed into a full-blown habit—Just woke up? Read the news. Bored? Refresh the news. Unmotivated? Check the news. The promise of inspiration lies around every virtual corner, but it’s a false promise. And it leads to a phenomenon called “continuous partial attention.” By seeking that next interesting thing, I’ve weakened my ability to simply be, to allow that most important thing to happen—the wandering of an idle mind. And by losing that silence, by filling any space with something, I’ve subjected myself to chronic stress, to imbalance, to a dearth of artistry.
What’s a reading junkie to do?
Reduce distractions. Leave the house without my phone (*shudder*). Practice. Allow boredom in.
What will I get (what will you get)? Calm. Peace. Creativity. Breakthroughs. Freedom.
2
BEAUTY IN WORDS
The art of choosing the perfect word has been turned into literal art in Ella Frances Sanders’ Lost in Translation, an illustrated book of words from languages other than English that have no English equivalent. Favorites:
The Swedish fika: “Gathering together to talk and take a break from everyday routines, usually drinking coffee and eating pastries—either at a café or at home—often for hours on end.” ← My ideal afternoon.
The Japanese komorebi: “The sunlight that filters through the leaves of the trees.” ← That which instantly transports me into a state of wonder.
The Yiddish trepverter: “A witty riposte or comeback you think of only when it is too late to use. Literally ‘staircase words.’” ← Me, after every conversation.
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ILLUSTRATE THAT MAP
A few years ago, as a gift for a friend who lives abroad but came to live with my family for a year, I turned a map into art as a welcome gift—a taste of home, if you will. Being more of the “paint with a paintbrush and draw with a pencil” more than a “open the program and execute a series of complex mouse clicks” artist, turning a slice of Google Maps into a piece of digital art I could have printed on a canvas was quite the trial-and-error creation process. I’m glad I did it, but, wow, do I wish I’d had these clear, easy-to-follow design tips at hand to nail the composition.
Y’all know I’m a bit social media-avoidant. I avoid platforms for several reasons, including the fear that I’ll succumb to being strictly a consumer, never exploring my own thoughts, never attempting feats of creativity, lost, instead, inside someone else’s construction. I forfeit, perhaps, possibilities—to connect, to be inspired, to be ignited by the spark of an idea shared by another, to coax the flames of an ember a stranger has cast aside into something new—in favor of my analog life of baking and digging and planting and imagining and jotting.
I am not alone in this world I’ve chosen—other creatives out there love their creative work but not the sales effort that powers the conversion of their creativity into salary. One barrier to entry is considering your social media accounts an extension of your profession; that introduces pressure because suddenly, in addition to your job, you have this other job to maintain outside of work that looks … a lot like work.
What do you do, then, when your professional life would benefit from a social media presence but you’re not the best at tooting your own horn? Celebrate a different part of yourself online. Build a following for the niche hobby you’re into. Find your tribe. They’ll love the community you make, and they’ll support your creative work too.
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FIND YOUR NICHE
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THESAURUS LOVE
I must immediately direct you to this paragraph in the latter half of this article in praise of the thesaurus—it simultaneously sums up my love of using less-common-but-accurate vocabulary words and my loathing of invented corporate words:
But the alternate problem is that people are too afraid to test new words — even words that are correct, but obscure — because they are afraid of seeming foolish and they either stay within the bounds of a safe vocabulary or (if they are a certain business-managerial type) cope by inventing hideous new words. Fear of the thesaurus has unleashed horrors a Chthonic god could only dream of, like synergy and incentivize.
Need I say anything else about this article? Word nerds, it delights from start to finish.