attention & resistance
I have read half of Oliver Burkeman’s book, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, since Sunday. I am loving it. Incredible and powerful. Absolutely recommend.
I am hoping to finish the book by Saturday night. (I think it’s a reasonable hope; I am halfway through the book and not quite halfway through the week!)
As a kid, I read voraciously, but in more recent years, my relationship to reading has been more hit or miss. It’s easy to get busy and caught up in other things and let the TBR stack pile up unattended. I definitely still read here and there, and there have been seasons even as an adult with a lot of reading in them. Overall, though, my book consumption has declined, and my latest season isn’t one of many books.
I have always loved books, and I miss regular, committed reading. So I’m practicing. I’m trying to build reading into my days again as a habit so I can assure I keep time and focus for it, not letting innumerable days or weeks go by before I remember to sit down and get caught up in a book.
I’ve been reading a book almost every day, listening to an audiobook, and reading more of my favorite blogs and email subscriptions.
In general, in this area and in others, I am trying to practice giving more of my attention to what I really care about doing. Reading — even as I am often struggling to keep my focus on the page — makes me feel better and more centered, interested, and engaged. Pushing through the itch, choosing to keep reading in spite of it, is always worth it. Same for journaling, even when I don’t feel like it. Same for building this blog. (Which I am loving! I have hit 20 published posts! I have a current goal of 300 in 2023, so that’s 7%!)
As Burkeman writes about in Four Thousand Weeks, I am fascinated by how strongly and how frequently we do not feel like doing the things before us, including things we truly care about and think of as important to us. How much we are relentlessly drawn to distractions and procrastinations. The necessity for embracing the inevitable discomfort of our lives, the discomfort of staying present, and the discomfort of any valuable, meaningful, challenging task we ever take on. These things are uncomfortable. They matter, and they require something of us, so that can feel hard.
Through acceptance and engagement with this fact, and through giving our attention to our chosen important matters anyway, we can build a resilient life of contentment and presence.
Keep practicing. ❤
