Chronic Chaos and What to Do About It
My Learning: Ditch the lavender candle and let's go
Remember two weeks ago when I asked, Is it possible to live without chronic overwhelm? Every month, I’ll update you on how the question has been living through me while I chew on it. Answers aren’t ever quick or final. Being gone for 10 days on a work trip created a teeming testing ground upon return. I walked through the cold autumn starlit night into our home and snuggled up with my kids who had purposely fallen asleep in our bed. One roused herself at 12:45am, held my face and whispered, “I’ve been waiting for you for days.” What is better than this kind of reception? Nothing. Nothing at all. The next morning, 3-minutes after opening my eyes, my family life responsibilities roared back in like a flash flood. I love my life and my family and I know this quaky transition moment well. I prepare for it. I hear the distant rumble before the milky brown water barrels my way. It will smack me down unless I leap onto a cliff to gain perspective and pause. Often I don’t make it or I’m hanging on by my pinky and it’s easier to give up and fall—into the deluge. When I do scramble up to that ledge, I can sort the debris and bigness slowly, temper my approach and act more like the person I want to be.
Sometimes, both things happen. Part #1: I reminded myself that I have a rhythm and that today is my day for writing. The book-keeping and menu organizing and bill paying and cleaning and strategic planning and curriculum forming and even dog walking (sorry pups) could wait. I have slots for those later in the week. It truly felt like landing in the soft lap of My Rhythm. Phew. That lap is the a containment I need. I walked my well-fed, content kids into school and began my day. Part #2: Twelve hours later, a conversation with my daughter about her towels being on the floor amidst three other creatures needing me while I needed me sent me into a burst of frustration followed by a puddle of tears and some heavy-duty repair. I have a game plan for these moments but on my game I was not. Not even a little bit. Maybe I’m delicate. Maybe my nervous system is tender. Maybe I’m the canary. Maybe I’m a human who needs slowness and rhythm to be able to ride her ups and downs more gracefully. So many people say that if you are aligned internally it doesn’t matter what is happening externally. Okay. Yes. Ideally. Perhaps. In moments. Though, here comes Queen Both/And. She always seems to be the most right. AND, it’s equally true that when external needs are met, everything is much easier. When, for example, the fridge is full and there’s a plan for dinner, it’s a smoother road to calm. A need for external rhythm is encoded in all humans. It’s a true home base for me. I reach for it.
If you watched above, that’s part of my answer to the chronic chaos. Can I listen to what I need? What do I, the unique combination of cells and soul and hormones and wiring that is me, need? How about you? Go find a rock. Ditch the lavender candle (unless you like it). Let’s get specific. What do you like? What calms you down? What energizes you?
What do you know about yourself?
It’s hard to know anything about your sensibilities if you are distracted or bombarded by other people’s ideas and don’t have any quiet space to LISTEN within. The modern predicament with attention feels so tragic to me. For so many reasons. We scroll scroll scroll away from ourselves (and ultimately away from others).
I want to linger on the word CHRONIC. Periods of chaos are okay and even adaptive. We need them in order to evolve. But we are living in “chronic times”—everything is chronic, our health conditions, our lack of focused attention, our disconnection from loved ones, our fast pace. Some people have a harder path (the systems make it so) to forge away from chaos. Yet we do all have small and big choices to make.
Here are some of my favorite (old and new) resources on the attention economy.
Side-note: Where we put out attention matters, of course, and sliding into the pit of doomsday is not helpful. Some of this information is affronting, especially the first one, so take it slowly if it feels like too much. Small sips.
Antonio Lopez on “The Colonization of Our Attention” on For The Wild podcast. He explores slow media, the dangers of information monopoly, Vandana Shiva’s naming of the colonizing of our internal space, iPhone’s swiping design based on slot machines, how our attention is a limited resource, the ecological impacts of all of it. It’s a dense, sobering and comprehensive look. Lopez is on the forefront of what so many of us can’t stomach yet.
You likely already know Tricia Hersey and her book “Rest Is Resistance.” If you haven’t made time to read it, do! Her words are contextualized, unapologetic and textured. She stares productivity right in the eye. She focuses on and centers Black liberation and speaks directly to the importance of all of us unplugging from the systems that are failing us.
This podcast episode “How Trance States Shape the World” moved me deeply. It’s hosted by Joshua Michael Schrei on The Emerald. I told a friend that it’s hard for me to receive this information from an American White Man, and yet he also weaves so many dynamic and cultural pieces together into something that had major value for me. It’s worth listening to the end. My take-aways are 1) trance is the main need of humans and we are ceremonial animals 2) we can ask ourselves “What kind of trance do I want? What is the source of my trance?” He posits that scrolling creates trance in people, so we are finding our trance in ways that impoverish us instead of fill us. Trance was also a state historically guarded and protected and initiated in us by elders. Instead, we are now floating along alone in trances that don’t connect to other physical humans or relationships.
Jenny Odell’s book “Resisting the Attention Economy” is a pre-pandemic work of academic art. You’ll want your pen to underline and her writing on time opens up the same veins.
After my undoing around all of the undoing, I paused all the physical undoings (dishes and such) and made some art about the kinds of detours that help or hinder me. I also wrote down some sentences as a short manifesto for myself:
I need rhythm. I need slow. That’s okay. I will unravel systemic too-muchness by not supporting it. This might not be initially comfortable. I will normalize snail pace as essential to the balance of the hare. I will take action and not settle into non-action complaint and “I know”-ness with friends. I will step into a trance of the tactile: touch, sound, sight, smell, taste. I also need beans. *Beans is a whole other newsletter somewhere down the line.
Thank you for sending me your rhythm graphs. Send me more! Post them below if you are moved. It helps others to see them and often helps you to be seen. *If anyone has other resources on the attention economy, I would love to know about them. Share, share, share! This. Is. How. We. Do. It. and This. Is. What. We. Do. About. It.
What has your attention journey been like?
In support of getting in touch with your own animal, my 6-week course Story Mammal starts next week. ”How does your mammal do it?” is a refrain. You will gain deep, provocative and new insight about your own ways—that matters because then you can meet yourself in the waves differently and that impacts everyone around us and beyond. Best news it that Jen Bloomer of Radici Studios will be joining this season to provide some art-making curriculum in tandem with our journey. Whoa! I can’t wait to see what unfolds. This is the only time I’ll mention Story Mammal on this newsletter (I’ll send some more info via my Mailchimp this week). The Friend Deal is excellent. We start Oct 10; doors are open early today; free class to suss me out is tomorrow (you have to sign up for it here if you want to attend or receive the recording).
Okay all, go well into your mid-week.
Love,
