The Secret Economy of Attention

How the quiet choices of focus shape the architecture of our lives

The Weight of Air – Rendered by the author in Midjourney

I’ve been thinking a lot about attention lately. I'm not talking about the kind where you’re standing at a podium and someone taps a glass with their fork to get the room quiet (though, admittedly, that would be satisfying). I mean the subtler, everyday kind – where we place our focus, what we let take up space in our brains, and which plants we choose to water with our gaze.

I'm realizing that it’s funny how little we talk about it when attention is arguably our most precious currency. Seriously, forget Bitcoin, forget dollars. Attention (and time) is what really makes the world go round. And unlike money, there’s no way to earn more of it. You get the same 24 hours as everybody else, the same finite mental resources. Once you’ve spent them, they're gone. 

Attention as a Form of Power

Sometimes, I imagine my own little cache of attention as little golden coins in my pocket. Every time I look at something, think about something, or click on something? Clink, there goes a coin. And those coins eventually accumulate wherever they fall.

If I spend them on my writing, my garden, my rituals, my people? That pile eventually grows into something lush and sustaining. But if I spend them on doomscrolling or what some toxic frenemy probably thinks of my spiritual beliefs? Well, then, congratulations to me, because I just fed the weeds. Again.

When I was younger, I didn’t realize that what I gave my attention to would ultimately dictate the texture of my future life. I thought it was all just harmless distraction. But now, at almost fifty, I look around and see exactly where all my attention has gone. Every corner of my existence bears the imprint of the choices I’ve made about what I feed.

Then vs. Now: Growing Older With The Village

The Village - M. Night Shyamalan (2004)

Something interesting I've noticed as I get older. Some of the films you really loved at different times don’t necessarily stay the same when you periodically revisit them. Many of them actually grow with you. Or maybe it’s that you grow, and the film remains a mirror for both the person you were and the one you're becoming. For me, one of those films is M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village.

But watching it again as a middle-aged person who's seen a thing or two, I don't just see a strange remote place for people who valued the old ways anymore. I find it impossible to ignore the way this is really a story about fear, illusion, and what it costs to live an isolated life behind walls. And that shift in how I see the film says a lot about how I’ve changed, too.

Back Then: A Candlelit Fantasy

I first saw The Village in my late 20s. Back then, I was still having a lot of trouble finding a place for myself in the world where I felt like I fit and was beginning to wonder whether I ever would. 

However, I found a lot of solace in stories about bygone times and other places. Modern life felt way too loud for me back then. Too fast. Too many computers and complicated shortcuts. Too full of people who failed to see the beauty in slow living and simple things. That version of me thought it would be wonderful to go back in time and just... like... stay there.

So, The Village scratched more than one itch for me at the time. The rustic wooden homes, the flickering candles, the soft clothes in muted hues. The whole thing looked like it had been dipped in beeswax and nostalgia. 

And the elders’ decision to retreat from modern life made perfect sense to me. Of course, they wanted to preserve the “old ways.” Who wouldn’t want to escape noisy cars, rude neighbors, and relentless technology in favor of vegetables straight from the garden and long evenings under lantern light?

I wasn’t entirely thinking about manipulation, or lies, or what it costs to live inside a bubble built on fear. I was just thinking, "Hell yeah, sign me up for this village Airbnb (minus the monsters)!" I was still searching for refuge more than truth. A place that felt safe and intentional, even if it was also a little suffocating. 

And The Village gave me that fantasy.

The Art of Doing Nothing (With a Little Help from Slacker)

Slacker - Richard Linklater (1990) Courtesy of Orion Classics

It's really no secret that most of us are taught to fear doing nothing. Idleness is suspicious. Productivity is the religion of the day. So, if you’re not grinding, optimizing, or “getting ahead” every second of every day, then what are you even doing with your life?

Me? I’ve always been on the other side of that equation. If ambition meant taking a straight shot across the field with a touchdown in mind, I would have been the person wandering around the edges, looking at dandelions and clouds instead. And for most of my life, I was told that made me a failure. A slacker.

Which is probably why finally getting a chance to sit down and check out Richard Linklater’s Slacker a couple of weeks ago – decades after it came out – felt like such a strange kind of homecoming.

Doing Nothing, Cinematically

If you’ve never seen it, here’s the gist. Slacker doesn’t really have a plot or any big, hairy point it's trying to make. There's no main character, no grand growth arc, no traditional payoff. It just drifts through a day in Austin, Texas, following one character until another wanders into frame a few minutes later, then shifting focus.

Most of the characters (if you can call them that) are, by conventional standards, “doing nothing.” They’re rambling about conspiracies, fiddling with art projects, spontaneously philosophizing, waiting for God only knows what, hanging out, talking about whatever. None of them are rushing to work or thinking about how they're going to reach that next rung on the corporate ladder.

And yet... it’s alive. Very much so. The whole film hums with this strange electricity, like the air between two people at 2 AM when you’ve both wandered way too far off the map of ordinary conversation.

It’s a movie that says, maybe nothing is something... if you look closely enough.

The Myth of Wasted Time (and Why I'm Not Playing That Game Anymore)

So, this week seems to be shaping up to be more about recalibrating and recentering than anything else. I saw that coming, though. The universe has had my hands full lately with several months of tasks and little emergencies – broken appliances that needed fixing, jury duty I couldn't get out of, and issues with problem clients, among other things. 

I finally seem to be back to a place where I have the time, room, and extra energy to start getting back on track with a few things (e.g., yardwork and daily exercise). I'm also trying my best not to fall into old familiar patterns that always find me beating myself up for needing to play catch-up in the first place. 

That said, we’ve all heard it – or worse, felt it. That insidious little voice whispering, “You should be further along by now.” You scroll past yet another life update on social media from a peer or an old classmate – a new job, a book deal, that dream vacation they've been daydreaming about for years. Suddenly, your own timeline, with its utter lack of vacations and awesome opportunities, feels… warped and crooked. 

I admit to still struggling with this myself, but that may be all the more reason to tell you. That voice is a liar. Or at the very least, wildly uninformed.

The Guilt Trip You Never Asked For

Negative self-talk and an insatiable need to measure up start super early, maybe with a parent, a teacher, or even just a system designed to rank you by productivity and potential. You internalize the idea that your value comes from not only doing, but doing quickly, all while blowing the rest of your competition completely out of the water.

Graduate by this age. Settle down by that one. Have a career, buy a house, never pause, never question. Keep producing. Keep climbing. And if you veer off track... or have to stay off track for a while? Well, clearly you’ve messed up and wasted your life. Once you do internalize that programming, it's very hard to move past. I'm honestly still working on it (and failing miserably at times).

When the System Hands You Humans Instead

When it comes to jury duty, there seem to be two types of people out there — the type that loves the idea of serving on a jury and the type who will do just about anything to avoid it.

I’m a million percent the second type and have been my whole life, despite never having had to report in person before yesterday. I don’t drive, and the courthouse is relatively far from my home. Plus, I’m neurodivergent with terrible anxiety and agoraphobic tendencies, so jury duty is packed with potential triggers I’ve learned to avoid through hard personal experience.

So, when I got my summons in the mail a while back, I tried everything I could to avoid it. I asked my therapist to write me an excusal letter (which unfortunately didn’t come through in time.) I overthought and tried to plan for every little possibility. I rage-snacked. You name it.

But this time the summons stuck, so yesterday morning, I found myself seated in a government building full of strangers and unfamiliar smells, bracing for the worst.

What I didn’t expect was how human the day would feel at the end of it all. Not in a “yay bureaucracy” kind of way, because fuck that, but in a we’re all just doing our best in here sort of way. And that, more than anything else, is what I want to share today, because I think we all need reminders like this from time to time.

Entering the Machine With Dread

Courthouses and legal protocol are designed to make you feel small and insignificant. Cold lighting. Metal detectors. People barking instructions about bags, and belts, and phones. So, as a neurodivergent person with anxiety, I arrived already feeling like prey. I anticipated robotic procedures and poor treatment from cold, cruel people who serve the machine (and like it). I expected to feel like just another cog in a system that doesn't care.

But what I found instead were… people:

• An older woman who sat next to me, pulled out a pendulum, and started divining with it like it was the most natural thing in the world to be doing in a courthouse
• A bailiff with a kind voice and a sense of humor who seemed more concerned with whether we spilled juice or coffee on the carpets than ruining anyone’s day
• A judge and a state prosecutor who genuinely thanked us for being there, acknowledged our inconvenience, and took real time to listen to each person who spoke

I've Realized I'm a Happy Person at Heart

That's not something I would have been able to say about myself for most of my life. I spent years of my life thinking about what was wrong with the world, judging people who didn't live the way I thought they should and obsessing over the ways I didn't think my own life measured up to the status quo. But I've noticed things have been different for me lately.

It's not that my life changed. I still have the vast majority of the problems I had before and could well be stuck with some of them for the foreseeable future. I just have a better attitude than I used to. Some of that seemed to come with age, but the rest really was about a simple perspective change. It's a change I'm grateful for, as life is just better this way. After all, I only get one of those... a life. I don't really want to waste mine griping, complaining, and judging. 

Life's never going to be fucking perfect.

I used to think that I couldn't be happy until I got specific details of my life in line. When I was an awkward teenager, I thought being prettier would do it. Later on, I thought meeting someone would be the answer. Or finding a way to run a business out of my home so I wouldn't have to spend so much of my time at an office or behind a cash register somewhere. Then I met someone, got married, and still wasn't happy with my love life, so I got a divorce and started daydreaming about the day I'd meet someone better. Once I had a business, I wanted a better one doing more exciting work. 

There's always going to be something else -- some other part of your life that downright sucks or something monumental you finally achieve only to realize your life still isn't the way you want it. And the vast majority of those solutions you thought were going to solve all your problems come with brand new issues of their own. If you wait to allow yourself any measure of happiness or contentment until everything's perfect, you're going to be waiting until you drop dead.

Reflections on Life After Watching Disney-Pixar's Soul

I finally got to see the new Disney-Pixar movie the other night -- Soul. Being the giant, overgrown kid-at-heart I am, I get very excited about new Disney films as a rule, but I was extra eager to see this one. Not only does it have a Black lead and contain many references to Black culture -- something I'm happy to be seeing in more media -- but jazz music is an integral part of the film's theme, as well. I've come to love jazz, especially as I get older and increasingly excited about different kinds of music.

I liked the film very much in general. Still, I especially enjoyed its primary message about the concept of life purpose and how it addressed many common questions people have on the subject. 

• What does it mean to have a life purpose?
• Is your purpose about your profession of choice or something else entirely?
• What does it really feel like to finally realize your most significant, dearest goals in life?
• Where do little pleasures and daily experiences fit into the picture?
• Is it possible not to have a purpose, and what happens if that's the case for you?

At nearly 45, I've managed to answer many of those questions for myself, but it took me a while. Joe was my favorite character, so I'd love to say I was just like him -- maybe a little misguided, but always sure of what I wanted to do with my life. I'm really the spitting image of Soul 22, though. 

Like 22, I believed that I didn't have a life purpose for an extremely long time, especially when I was younger. While everyone else my age seemed to know exactly what they wanted to do with their lives, nothing seemed to resonate with me at all. I did know I enjoyed being creative -- drawing, writing, playing piano, and the like -- but there was no way to turn those things into stable livings that actually appealed to me back then. I didn't want to put on a suit and design logos for some soulless corporate entity or settle for teaching schoolchildren about the things I wanted to be doing myself. I especially disliked the idea of having to commute to an office every day.

"Christmas Means Family" Is a Full-of-Shit Statement

Clark Griswold is still my spirit animal.

Now that November's over and December is officially here, we're officially in the process of shifting gears at my house. That means the Christmas lights are lit on a nightly basis, and we've officially started our yearly watchings of some of our favorite holiday films. Last night's pick was one of my personal favorites -- National Lampoons Christmas Vacation. 

The older I get, the more I think I relate to Clark (Chevy Chase) on a level I never did when I first fell in love with this film. I keep holidays very low-key these days for all sorts of reasons, but I'm usually the person in my household that does most of the planning for holiday celebrations. I put together the menus and do all the cooking. Back when my living situation allowed for it more, I used to get pretty into decorating my apartment and trying to make it feel like a magical place to be for the holidays. Sometimes I'd go overboard or fail to plan ahead well enough and wind up shooting myself straight in the foot, just like Clark, but it's probably not too hard to understand why.

Growing up, I was a very idealistic child, and my home life failed to measure up in many ways. My parents stopped loving each other at some point when I was a little kid but made the "honorable" decision to "stay together for the kids" anyway. I don't know who they thought they were fooling, though, because it was pretty apparent that neither of them was about that family life. My dad openly dated other women and was home as little as possible, even around the holidays. My mom more or less just gave up on domestic life -- hated to cook, hated doing the mom thing, and hated keeping house. Each of my parents bad-mouthed the other to my brother and me non-stop, so that was fun.