Alan Jacobs, The Homebound Symphony:
Station Eleven had the Traveling Symphony: I’m trying to be the Homebound Symphony. Just one person sitting in my study with a computer on my lap, reading and listening and viewing, and recording and sifting and transmitting – sharing the good, the true, and the beautiful, with added commentary. The initial purpose of this work is to repair, not the whole culture, but just my own attention. On a daily basis I retrain my mind to attend to what is worthy. It is the task of a lifetime, especially in an environment which strives constantly to commandeer my attention, to remove it from my control, to make me a passive consumer of what others wish me to look at or listen to.
Take care to monitor your attention, especially regarding social media. It’s easy to get lost in nostalgia and repetitive feedback loops. Make sure that at least some of your influences – be they people, feeds, or algorithms — encourage a forward-looking, forward-thinking mindset. Otherwise, you risk stagnation, cycling through the same thoughts and experiences.
