Writing Workshop: Bedeviled by the Details
On the zero sum game of attention, expansion and contraction, and why tuning out is the new focus.
I’ll call it the alert effect.
A news alert will pop on my phone. I’ll reach to click. I’m susceptible to the urgency of alerts, even the ones that aren’t newsy and merely remind me that a new season of “Succession” is dropping. I need to know what’s happening. I like being first.
Lately, though, I’m dead last to be in the know. My kids come first, my paying work comes second. Someone needs a snack or their butt wiped. Or something spilled, or a beloved stuffy has gone missing, or one daughter pinched the other, or oh crap, it’s time for school pickup. Again. Kid alerts > news alerts. Priorities. It drives me bonkers when my husband, sitting in the other room, will tell me the details of an article I didn’t have time to read. Priorities.
I’ve ignored Trump’s impending indictment, horrible deaths caused by natural disasters, and political strife in France and Israel. I’ve tuned out and turned away from conflict, death, and strife across the globe because my sanity can’t withstand both everything everywhere all at once. And so, the petty grievances of children take precedence. What, they need to eat? Again?
The alert effect is an example of the many ways parents must shift their priorities. It’s not about news alerts per se, but rather my entire orientation toward the consumption of information. Sure, I can read the articles later, but by then it’s too late.
I’ve missed the moment.
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The twentieth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq brought about a reckoning. On March 23, 2003, I was pasting anti-war posters on bus stops down Santa Monica Blvd. to mark the invasion. Though I was angry and indignant, defacing public property was against the law, and breaking the law was out of character for me. What stands out is my action, however futile or performative.
I did not stare at a screen (I think I had a Nokia phone back then) like I do now. I took action. The smell of the wheat paste, the pulse of my friend’s car waiting while two of us slapped up the posters, the car careening away. I did something that rippled out in the world, however small.
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