I woke up after midnight, anxious about a stack of little things and a few major things, tinnitus1 ringing more loudly than ever. I just passed the year mark for living with constant high-pitched ringing – a status significant only in medical categorization: chronic. I was worried about how it was rewiring my brain, since I had to be ceaselessly distracted from the internal cicadas. Bouncing from internet articles to phone games, binge watching to podcast listening, there is no end to the distractions. Throw in the political chaos of megalomaniacal sociopaths and it is conceivable that one could never have a single quiet moment or original thought.
Attention n. a state in which cognitive resources are focused on certain aspects of the environment rather than on others and the central nervous system is in a state of readiness to respond to stimuli. Because it has been presumed that human beings do not have an infinite capacity to attend to everything—focusing on certain items at the expense of others—much of the research in this field has been devoted to discerning which factors influence attention and to understanding the neural mechanisms that are involved in the selective processing of information.
What made me go a little mad when the noise started was the fear that I’d never know quiet or peace again. It took me months to realize that the world has always been a noisy place and what I considered quiet was a lack of distraction and the ability to stay still for long periods of time. It was a space I had to cultivate for myself – whether the lure of a book or a walk in the woods or just closing my study door to write. Long before the tinnitus came along, I’d ceded ground, giving my attention one snippet, post, reel, popup at a time. All the while seeing exactly what people with money and power wanted me to see and feel – outrage and products and ideology and a cacophony of spend, spend, spend. However powerless I’ve been feeling at times, ceding one of the few things I have control over seems feckless.
2025 is the year I continue to re-train myself in attention and focus. It starts with looking at values, process, and outcomes. Reaffirming one’s values takes some effort. Some things I valued in my 20s, 30s, and 40s are not the same priorities I have now, but my reflexive habits say otherwise. Why is “productivity” still in the mix when I hunger for deep understanding? Why am I still a consummate list maker when I’d rather spend the day lost in a single project? Why, when I hunger for nature, do I think sitting for long periods of time “working” suits my needs? And most of all, why am I in a hurry, flitting from one thing to another when what I long for is meaningful work and purpose? My thought processes and physical actions are contrary to my longings.
I’ve started some small practices and I’m not very good or consistent yet, but improvement only comes in the doing of the thing.
Reading
I’m coming to terms that I’m a reading weirdo and starting to lean into it. While decidedly lowbrow in many ways, my reading habits have always been…odd. I like literary fiction and science articles and entire books about trees. This is something that developed over the last decade when I realized much of my reading had become ephemeral. I want reading that leaves a mark. This means a couple of things to me – slowing down, picking material that requires some work and rereading to understand. This is my particular joy and I have to ignore friends who make jokes about my highbrow or snobbish reading. People react to reading preferences like they do when someone tells them they’re vegan. Defensively explaining why they have to eat chicken or only read in a particular genre. It’s okay to not be the same and says nothing of one’s intelligence or tastes. Except if you rave about Cormac McCarthy.
Writing
When the tinnitus began, a key point of misery for me was that I couldn’t focus enough to write. I write in quiet and had several crying jags when I’d try to write against the high-pitched onslaught in my brain. Maybe you don’t have tinnitus. Maybe you have a shitty neighbor or rambunctious children or a construction site outside your front door. Maybe it’s just the siren lure of doomscrolling or bingewatching. Learning to shut it down and shut it out is a practice in and of itself. I started to use a study method I learned about from my daughter – the Pomodoro Technique. This method is helping me to re-train my attention span. I have been, despite my worst intentions, productive.
The other thing I’ve been experimenting with is longhand writing for first drafts. I hated it. So accustomed to the rat-a-tat-tat speed of using a computer, it felt torturous. However, some well-established writers swear by it and there are studies2 that suggest better brain connectivity, recall, and potentially more creative pathways. I don’t do it all the time, but I’m trying to do it more. It’s sloooooowwww, but speed is not of the essence. Ideas and cognitive connections are.
The World at Large
Oof. This is a tough one. I’m not keeping my head in the sand until the brown shirts or environmental disaster arrives at my door. I care about other humans and the planet too much to let that stand. However, there is a fine balance between being in the know and being completely depressed and paralyzed by the constant stream of outrageous and demoralizing news. When I looked up articles and recommendations on managing news intake, invariably there was a picture of a white lady doing yoga/meditation/breathing exercises. Sure, if that’s your thing, it might do it for you. It works for me about 5 minutes out of the day and then I need to get on with the business of managing my anxiety.
Here are my own tips which would show up in an article with a picture of me bashing my monitor with a hammer:
- Recognize you control your intake of the world at large – namely you can walk away from the TV or computer or newspaper or phone at any given moment.
- Feel that rage build or your anxiety pivot into a heart-racing attack? Go outside. Do the dishes. Stretch. Do something concrete and physical, reconnecting your body and mind and disconnecting from the “what if” world out there. You are safe in this very moment. The blanket you are hiding under is soft and warm.
- Post-rage/anxiety moment. Do something helpful. Donate to a local food bank. Call a friend who has been feeling down. Leave tense voicemails and emails for your political representatives. Give your emotions purpose and outlet. Remind yourself that while humans are fuck ups, most of us are doing the best we can with the tools we have.
- Ask yourself the following questions:
- Is this helpful or useful?
- Is there an actionable, useful response to this latest fill-in-the-blank outrage?
- Who is benefitting from my attention here? Advertiser, corporation, politician, influencer?
At a time when so many people feel powerless and are tipping towards learned helplessness, attention is a precious resource. I want to be whole as possible at the end of this year, not decimated by fear, anxiety, and scattered thinking. If we work to keep ourselves grounded and whole, we can show up for others. Things will be better for it, no matter what happens in the wide, wide, chaotic world.
Wishing you all an intentional and attentive 2025!
Administrative Note: If one of your resolutions in 2025 is to become a better fiction writer, have I got the spot for you! I’m teaching a two-hour online workshop about point-of-view this month. It’s not a fancy-schmancy academic workshop. You’ll get some craft information, do some writing exercises, and best of all, you’ll meet other writers in a friendly, supportive environment. Community is at the top of my 2025 wish list. Sign up and write with The Green Study Workshop!
- Tinnitus (pronounced tih-NITE-us or TIN-uh-tus) is the perception of sound that does not have an external source, so other people cannot hear it. Tinnitus is commonly described as a ringing sound, but some people hear other types of sounds, such as roaring or buzzing. https://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/tinnitus ↩︎
- A. van der Meer and F.R. van Der Weel. Handwriting but not typewriting leads to widespread brain connectivity: a high-density EEG study with implications for the classroom. Frontiers in Psychology. Published online January 26, 2024. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1219945.
T.J. Smoker et al. Comparing memory for handwriting versus typing. Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting. Vol. 53, October 2009, p. 1744. doi: 10.1177/154193120905302218. ↩︎
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