Fear is a habit like any other, and habits kill what is essential in ourselves.

- Rachel Cusk, Second Place

I think often about how much time and energy we use thinking up things to say that would go over well with a context-collapsed crowd—not to mention checking back on how that crowd is responding. This is its own form of “research,” and when I do it, it feels not only pathetic but like a waste of energy. What if we spent that energy instead on saying the right things to the right people (or person) at the right time? What if we spent less time shouting into the void and being washed over with shouting in return—and more time talking in rooms to those for whom our words are intended?

- Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy

Unlike the libertarian blank slate that appeals to outer space, or even the communes that sought to break with historical time, this “other world” is not a rejection of the one we live in. Rather, it is a perfect image of this world when justice has been realized with and for everyone and everything that is already here. To stand apart is to look at the world (now) from the point of view of the world as it could be (the future), with all of the hope and sorrowful contemplation that this entails.

- Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy

I’ve already written that the “doing nothing” I propose is more than a weekend retreat. But that doesn’t mean I propose a permanent retreat either. Understanding the impossibility of a once-and-for-all exit—for most of us, anyway—sets the stage for a different kind of retreat, or refusal-in-place […]. Here’s what I want to escape. To me, one of the most troubling ways social media has been used in recent years is to foment waves of hysteria and fear, both by news media and by users themselves. […] In my opinion, this kind of hyper-accelerated expression on social media is not exactly helpful (not to mention the huge amount of value it produces for Facebook). It’s not a form of communication driven by reflection and reason, but rather a reaction driven by fear and anger. Obviously these feelings are warranted, but their expression on social media so often feels like firecrackers setting off other firecrackers in a very small room that soon gets filled with smoke. […] In such a context, the need to periodically step away is more obvious than ever. Like the managerial employees who wandered away from their jobs, we absolutely require distance and time to be able to see the mechanisms we thoughtlessly submit to. More than that, as I’ve argued thus far, we need distance and time to be functional enough to do or think anything meaningful at all.

- Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy

He was basically a Care Bear trapped in the body of an underwear model. I was confused by him for months. Why was he so bad at flirting? Why did he do the things he said he was going to? Why was he so damn happy all the time? What was I missing?

— Fault Lines, Emily Itami

“For me, the practice of putting pen to paper creates an alchemy hard to duplicate any other way.”

- Jen Hatmaker, Fierce, Free, and Full of Fire

“We actually rob people of growth when we shoulder the brunt of their consequences.”

— Jen Hatmaker, Fierce, Free, and Full of Fire

“If your conviction is related to injustice for a group of people, your very first stop is pulling up a chair to their table and learning from their experiences. Remember, no one is actually voiceless. People have voices, just not enough listeners. There is no substitute for the lived experience of the people you care about. Do your homework. Log your time. Develop your understanding. Learn from the right leaders. Take it seriously. Then get after it.”

- Jen Hatmaker, Fierce, Free, and Full of Fire

“It is good and important work to live a connected life. If this is the area where you concentrate your energy, it is time well spent.”

- Jen Hatmaker, Fierce, Free, and Full of Fire

I’m in the market for a new therapist, and this feels like the closest I’ve ever come to online dating. All this checking out of profiles and photos and sending a little info but not too much info and trying to pencil decent-looking people in on my calendar while sending hilarious-looking people to a friend to snark at with me.

Also if I make too many more contacts I might need a spreadsheet to keep people straight because right now I have two contenders with the same first initial and both with last names in the same noun category, like C. Bass (lol, get it! no fish pun intended but now I will never let it go) and C. Trout for example. They both have straight, slightly-past-shoulder-length hair and the Therapist Photoshoot smile, and I truly can’t keep them straight in my mind. I keep being like “Okay, C. Trout is the one with the somewhat severely plucked eyebrows and C. Bass is...I don’t remember AT ALL, let me go look at her photo again.”

I don’t have much so far to differentiate them. They both responded to me within 24 hours, within hours of each other, offering times to talk over the next few days.

C. Bass:

- seems nice, warm, thoughtful (online presence)

- has a couple specialties that are in my history and a focus that is very relevant to my present

- disclosed something personal about her family (like, just the fact of the existence of her husband and two kids) which really rubs me the wrong way because I am so big on NOT wanting to know anything personal about them but I guess this is a whole brand/breed of therapist being “relatable”

- tends toward CBT as an approach for certain areas, other areas described more vaguely about breaking patterns and improving self

- LCSW

- uses periods and no exclamation points over email

C. Trout:

- seems kind, compassionate, thoughtful (online presence) —> same as above

- has a couple specialties that are in my history and a focus that is very relevant to my present —> same as above

- could be a good fit with professional background and overlapping interests/experiences —> maybe slightly more than above

- disclosed her parenting status —> same as above except no mention of partner and just one kid

- tends toward...hard to say what approach as it was described in very broad, layman’s terms about seeing the whole person including past/present/future and inclusion of ways structures and society impact a person

- MFT

- uses exclamation points liberally over email

I will report back.

“In memory,” she said, “there’s no ahead and no behind really, is there? Memory wells up in the now, in vertical time. And remembered time, as you know, is shot through with imagination.”

Siri Hustvedt, Memories of the Future