Follow-Up
Email newsletters are a cruel master for the lazy editor. How many people noticed my attempted joke in last week’s issue that required me to strike through a couple words — that ended up solidly un-struckthrough?
Attention and frustration
I’m writing these words as I sit on a screened-in porch overlooking a golf course (the sounds of an older gentleman saying, “Oh son of a bitch!” As he hacks his way out of a sand bunker just drifted by) on a beautiful and breezy Florida morning. On Friday, Emily and I took an early flight from Washington D.C. to come down to Naples for the weekend to visit her parents. When we got to the terminal, the gate agent asked for volunteers to gate check their bags to their final destinations. We each had a carry-on and since we were going to be boarding pretty late in the process, we figured we’d simplify our lives by taking the offer to gate check.
We landed in Florida (via Atlanta) to no bags to be found anywhere. And now, 24 hours later, still no bags anywhere. They haven’t surfaced at any other airport and nobody at the airline can tell me where they might be. It’s feeling more and more that we may have seen the last of them.
Objectively, this is a relatively minor situation. We arrived to a fully-stocked home full of extra toiletries and clothes we can borrow. We are only here for two days. We have no fancy plans that require us to be dressed in any particular way. We didn’t have any computers in our bags. We’ve mostly just lost clothes, toiletries, and some expensive dental-ware (me, a fitted mouth guard for sleeping; Emily, a retainer — we are sexy people).
The situation is minor and yet I’m struck by how much it has impacted the quality of my attention. Being thrust into an opaque bureaucracy I don’t trust and can’t influence has consumed more of my attention than I would’ve expected. I’m frustrated and annoyed and the vague idea of “improving my attention” seems trite and stupid. My digital detox has been largely ignored over the past 24 hours as I took to Twitter to try to demand satisfaction/information from the airline and well, you know, now that I’m here, maybe I’ll just browse my timeline while I wait for them to DM me back. Oh, what’s that? Thirty minutes of mindless scrolling?
I’m blessed to very rarely have to deal with bureaucratic incompetence and rigamarole (I mean, other than what I do for a living... but that somehow feels different). I suspect that if I were poorer or marginalized in some other way this would potentially be a much larger part of my life. And if that were the case would I still be so interested in personal development? Would I be able to adapt to my surroundings and still carve out some of my attention for personal growth? Or would so much of my attention be consumed by the day-to-day of living that I would look to someone like me, or a newsletter like this, and roll my eyes?
Bonus Reading
• Being poor changes your thinking about everything. LINK
• Your brain on scarcity. LINK
• The good-enough life. LINK
• John Siracusa’s great games list. LINK
• How I ditched my phone and unbroke my brain. LINK
Closing Round
• Drinking: Dunkin’ Donuts K-cup coffee.
• Eating: Two burgers yesterday. Vacation mode, engaged. Beach body, disengaged.
• Reading: Finished Figuring. Ultimate verdict, pretty good. Working on book 3 of The Expanse, Abaddon’s Gate.
• Listening: A little worried that listening to music all the time is becoming another one of my digital detox “leaks.” We’ll see. This week has been more Cloud Cult and also just letting Spotify serve up some tunes from my high school days.
• Watching: The Red Wings continue to lose all the time. The season is mercifully coming to a close, soon.
• Working: Aaron’s book, Brave New Work, has been out in the world for a couple weeks and we’re starting to see some early returns for The Ready. I’ve been thinking through how we can better handle inbound requests.
Until next time!
Your unexpectedly-more-minimal-than-usual friend,
Sam