Writing Prompt: Gifts of Attention
January 2025
I am entering the new year slowly and carefully. Several things broke at the end of the year (our septic pump on NYE, as an example!). I am trying not to panic or adhere any future meaning to these strange occurrences. However, I am entering 2025 with an attitude of flexibility and adaptability.
Recently, I read that the average American now spends 2.5 months on their phone. Being on your phone for ~3-4 hours per day could dramatically shorten your year? What? Yes—phones are useful for a variety of reasons, but where does that time go? Where does our attention go? More importantly, how do these devices affect the quality of our attention? These are the questions I am asking myself in this new year.
Speaking of attention, I read several, short books in December. This article, “Short Books Are Perfect For Our Distracted Age” by Margaret Renkl has some great recommendations if you are looking for a compact, rich read. While I hope to reboot my attention span this year and tackle some weighty tomes, I enjoyed reading Claire Keegan’s Foster and Jo Ann Beard’s Cheri.
Short books offer something to read when you want to surrender to a story for longer than an hour but not for days and days. They are hefty enough to immerse yourself in and often short enough to finish before midnight, even with a distracted, 21st-century attention span. Even with a headline-weary mind.
Another “short book” I read in December was Robin Wall Kimmerer’s The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World. This is an extended essay that was first published in Emergence Magazine. I love the tone and pace of this book and it gave me a lot of ideas to contemplate that ranged from the philosophical to the practical.
To name the world as gift is to feel one's membership in the web of reciprocity. It makes you happy—and it makes you accountable. Conceiving of something as a gift changes your relationship to it in a profound way, even though the physical makeup of the “thing” has not changed.
Serviceberry-inspired Writing Prompts:
What gifts have you given recently? What gifts have you received?
Do you feel like you are a member in the web of reciprocity?
What can the gift of attention offer you?
Spend some time with each of these and feel free to comment and share below.