I listened to an episode called “Let It Linger: Ritualized Note-Taking to Take Your Attention Back” by Anna Howard on her “Wild Geese” podcast. I was excited to listen because I'm currently working on being more attentive in my daily life. She mentions a few things that really stuck out to me, as someone who also really enjoys writing.

One of the things she mentions she does is what I referred to earlier as “poetry watching”. She talks about how we often write about the past and reflect on what it means to us now, but this exercise is meant to help us build the muscle for observing our current situation and surroundings instead. I would normally write what I did earlier in the day:

“Yesterday, I sat in the sunlight beaming through the window like a cat when I could, under the guise of skimming through picture books for my story time program.”

What I can also do if I want to bring myself back to the present when I’m feeling lost in the depths of a spiraling thought, is write about what is going on around me now:

“Patrons walk in from the gray drizzle, their little ones’ feet stomping their way towards the back where the beloved toy kitchen sits in its corner. I hear the swoosh of traffic outside these brick walls from the main road.”

She clarifies that your notes don’t have to all correlate or make sense. The point is just to practice taking in the now.

Another practice she mentions that I really liked, is having a document or page in front of you to take notes with while taking in media. In this age, you shouldn’t be mad at yourself for consuming digital media because it’s such a part of our lives, and we’ve never had good attention spans as a species; history shows this. Rather than beat ourselves up to fight against it, we can be more conscious of what we’re taking in and make it matter. I can scroll through Pinterest and write down why I find certain ideas appealing, or how a quote makes me feel.

She then, in the morning, goes back through these “poems” she writes throughout the day and of her evening media notes, and expands on them for roughly 15 minutes.

I’m excited to practice these ideas and see how they work out for me. It makes me feel better knowing that it’s a part of my design for my brain to want to take it easy, and that rather than fighting the status quo of technology, using it to my advantage.