This week, I wanted to write about Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing. It is an important book for what I am trying to do here. Perhaps more than any other, it provides the intellectual collective tissue between the individual “arts of attention” that I am interested in and the collective social and political projects that I think these personal practices can contribute to enhancing.
Read moreWhy Flow and Creativity Matter: the arts of attention and saving ourselves from political-ecological collapse
As of today, I have typed up 36 of my 50 pages of notes that I accumulated beginning about a year ago. My goal for this year was to catch up to all the reading, thinking, and exploration that I had done related to playing the Feelings Collector. As it stands, I am on track to just about make it across the finish line, if I can stay disciplined and write every week. As it also happens, this week represents a threshold of sorts, where I have now arrived at a subheading in my notes that I have called “connections between the teachers and big take-aways.” Not a very snappy title, but it’s what I’ve got, and, for better or for worse, it captures the essence of what remains to do for this part of my project this year.
Read moreTaking care of ourselves, making meaning for ourselves
Last year when I was really struggling, I read three books that made a huge difference for me. The first was a book of poetry, Keep Moving, by Maggie Smith. It’s a lovely book, born of deep heartache and sorrow, that helped me begin to put myself back together. It gave me a language to describe my pain and hope that I could heal. The second was Self-Compassion by Kristin Neff, which helped me learn to accept the situation that I was in and to become more conscious and aware of my emotional responses. The third was Life is in the Transitions: Mastering Change at Any Age by Bruce Feiler. This one in particular put me on the path that I have been following ever since. It showed me that our lives are mostly lived in phases of turbulence and that, when faced with adversity, we have a choice: we can suffer or we can create a new life for ourselves.
Read moreWhat a difference a year makes
This week I was thinking a lot about how my life was going exactly a year ago. Last October, I was still reeling from the loss of my job and healthcare and dealing with the lingering pain of a particularly hurtful breakup. My identity had been so wrapped up in being an academic that when I was faced with the prospect of what I then perceived to be end of my academic career, I became completely unmoored. I was suffering from nearly constant intrusive and catastrophizing thoughts, daily anxiety attacks, and a general sense of failure. I have struggled with self-esteem issues since I was in middle school, but this was perhaps the most acute period of battling with insecurity that I had yet faced. With the help of my friends and mentors—and let’s be honest, the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program—I was able to survive this rough patch, but it was some time before I really began to heal.
Read moreUnfinished projects
Having settled into my new life in Istanbul, I have returned from the (mental) vacation that was preparing to move, leaving the city and friends that I love so dearly, traveling, arriving and getting my bearings in a new and exciting place. My re-entry into having a routine has been less than smooth, but I think I’ve managed to get the rock tumbler turning again. I had been filling it with ideas all along, but I badly needed to find a metaphorical outlet converter and a dedicated space to let it do its work.
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