Where is My Mind?
I’m not going to lie. I haven’t had any idea of what to write about all week. It’s not that there’s no shortage of climate and apocalypse news. There were devastating tornadoes in Kentucky and Missouri and genocide is still horrifyingly occurring in Palestine and there’s still a steady decline of democracy in America…and, and, and. And it’s so much.
Put on top of those that it’s Maycember for parents of young kids where every week, there’s a school or sports event or activity many of which I’m planning as PTA President (obviously comparatively nothing compared to the horror of the above list, yet dominating one’s mind all the same). Meanwhile, on our one quiet weekend day on Sunday, we had the brilliant thought to try to buy some pants-that-didn’t-tear-immediately for my son and we found ourselves briefly in a Marshall’s and I just had a moment where I couldn’t help but think look at all of this shit and went down a mental rabbit hole of feeling very much a part of the problem.
Pair this all with the general weirdness of being perimenopausal and navigating a million-and-a-half things, I’ve unintentionally been humming the Pixies’ Where is My Mind the last few days. Because I don’t know. Where IS my mind?
So when I read
’s post last week, “On Replenishing Attention,” I felt so seen. She writes:“My problem is, the people destroying our democracy, attacking science, progress, and vulnerable people everywhere, ripping holes in our already-tattered social safety net are just so tacky! They’re so stupid. There is nothing new left to say about them. The crypto schemes. The white elephant Qatari airplane. The ancient racism. The Barbie doll trade war!! So venal. So trivial. These people were boring in the 80s!”
Yet here we are reliving the past over and over again. Anya goes on not to keep in the moment of frustration, but to describe the general necessity of just taking a moment to find a way to pay attention in a way that isn’t down the click hole of your phone. For Mother’s day, she went to a contemporary art museum and had a day of relishing in the calm and beauty of the space, but also the discomfort and awe of being in such a space, especially with her children.
I didn’t have that experience on Mother’s Day and definitely not in the Marshall’s last Sunday. But it got me thinking about “attention.” It’s also something I’ve been working on with a client on a book about how modern Big Tech is designed specifically to take control over your attention. Attention is money.
Yet I can’t look away and my mind is worse for wear when I’m feeling everything from all sides politically, personally, and communally. It makes me strive to find something to bring my attention back to myself, my family, my community. Last year I wrote about this questioning whether I need to find a spiritual practice. Funny enough, this post was from almost exactly a year ago which I find hilarious and uncanny. (Note: I didn’t even realize it was published a year ago until I pulled it up a couple minutes ago to link here). There is certainly something about May that drives a climate and world-conscious mom mad and yet another reminder that there is, most definitely, a need to find some way to hone my attention.
This is all to say that I’m writing this now because, honestly, I couldn’t think about what to write about. It’s like all the ills of the world are jumbled in my mind in that nothing specific stands out. It’s as Anya said in so many words that it’s all just the same shit. That doesn’t mean we can’t do anything about it because we must. But it is a reminder that when our minds get too bogged down in <gestures wildly> all of it, it’s time to stop, breathe, and regroup.
And so, take this as my moment to do all of that.