On Attention

What I know is that I have none, and it is terrible.

My entire life has become switching screens.

I do not contain multitudes, not even close.

I am a bundle of fractures.

I look at something, I look away.

My children say, I can tell you are looking at your phone by the sound of your voice. You say “uh-huh” and that means you aren’t paying attention.

If you don’t have a good attention span…

I’m writing this essay because I couldn’t pay attention to the essay I was writing on domestic violence and the 2018 mass shooting that took place at the yoga studio where I practice. It’s embarrassing that I couldn’t pay attention because these topics are so urgent in my mind. 

Part of the reason I don’t have good attention is because I need attention and validation, so I check my social media often and text my friends. 

I went running today and I saw a red-tailed hawk in the middle of the road that completely captured my attention. I tried to take a picture of it, but it flew to an electric pole and the picture I took ended up being very blurry, because I took it at the exact moment that my husband texted me. I opened my text messages which made me move my camera away from the hawk.

I love running because I don’t have to pay attention to anything except moving my body. 

I check my phone hundreds of times while reading books, grading papers, or doing any sort of activity that requires my care.

If you can’t pay attention to this essay, I won’t hold it against you.

Why do I think that something better is waiting on the other side of my attention?

Why do I believe that something is better right here, on this side of my attention?

As I write this, I am thinking that maybe I should give my yoga studio essay more of my attention.

If I cut this work on my attention essay short and switch screens, back to the yoga essay, how long will it take for my attention to focus back on this one because I couldn’t pay attention?

Neuroscientists say that multitasking is a myth and that context switching (shifting your attention from one thing to another) is a huge time suck. They say multitasking just makes it take longer to complete any given task.

I hate it when my students look at their phones during class when I’m teaching. “Pay attention!” I say. Sometimes they roll their eyes. They probably know I’m a hypocrite, that I check my phone when I give them an in-class writing assignment.

Who do I think is going to email me? There is almost never anything more interesting on the other side of what I’m doing.

From now on, I will be dedicating my attention to the present.

But what if that vacant zone, that little dead space between checking is a total pleasure? What if it’s our connection with nothing? 

What if that is why we love it so much? The possibility that arises from nothing—the blank space, the imagination.

What if that space where nothing happens is potential energy and we are tapping into it? 

Maybe I like the fracture because that’s where the bone starts to heal.

Maybe I like the fragments because there isn’t one way to put any of this all together. 

Maybe I like the disjointed mind, grasping at colored light.

I started this essay by saying that inattention is terrible, but maybe I’m paying attention to the wrong things. 

They say we are, in the end, what we pay attention to, but what if we are really what we don’t pay attention to?

What if I start again?

On Attention

I have none and it’s wonderful.

I am delirious with my roaming focus.

I, too, contain multitudes.

I adore this bundle of fractures.

I love these shards of undying. 

I fully inhabit these epiphanic pieces of nothing.

I put them together and I’m ecstatic when they fall apart. 

I find the red-tailed hawk on my run and my heart is beating and I think thank god I’m alive and check my phone and my husband has texted me that he already misses me. It’s only 10:30am. Soon, I will take a shower and drive to Georgia to teach my creative writing classes.

I won’t shame my students for looking at their phones.

Maybe there is something better on the other side, after all.

Maybe the class is what isn’t happening inside the classroom today. 

Let’s go on a walk and study the sky and the trees.

Maybe today I am more not me than me.

If you have followed me, if you have had any interest in what I’m saying, or if you haven’t any paid attention whatsoever, maybe you are too.