Finished reading: How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell 📚
A few thoughts:
-
The “doing nothing” in the title isn’t just chilling, or conspicuous, performative self-care. It’s deeper and more profound than that, in a way I was not totally prepared for.
-
I was also not preparedness all for the academic rigor, complete with a web of primary sources. This is a substantial book.
-
(There is something somewhat ironic about reading this on vacation, as the author stresses the value of “resisting in place.”)
-
I’ve also been rereading “Franny and Zoey” on the beach (for the hundredth time, perhaps) and I keep coming back to this quote from Salinger, a quote so large I want to live inside it:
“There’s a marvelous peace in not publishing, there’s a stillness. When you publish, the world thinks you owe something. If you don’t publish, they don’t know what you’re doing. You can keep it for yourself.”
Anyway, I really want to think about this ideas that this book is posing. Like, really think deeply about them. And I get the irony of posting half-baked thoughts about this book, but this is maybe just part of my process of thinking now… And maybe that’s why I needed this book so badly.