Attention, Conversations, and Storytelling

In January and February this year I've been living alone for the first time in my life.

Having only lived with my family, sharing the house with my parents and three brothers, in five shared apartments in Rome and Berlin, and for the past five years with my husband, I just never got the chance to live alone.

What came about was a combination of silence and free time - whereas I would usually think of the other person I'm sharing the living space with quite often ("oh I'm making a coffee, would you like one? Are you hungry? I'm hungry. Should we cook? What are your plans now? Should we do something?), I was presented with a new reality, one in which I don't have to think much, I just do what I want and need to do.

Now, I definitely do not want to live alone forever, I love my husband, my community, my friends, in many instances the silence felt suffocating - I need people around me. But this was an interesting experiment to see what would happen now that I don't have to keep accountable for another person, in other words, I could do whatever I wanted.

That manifested in a long list of books, movies, albums, and podcasts I was to read, watch, and listen to. I even carried eight books with me from Berlin to Crete. What actually happened was that I found myself doomscrolling quite often, overwhelmed with the vastness of this silence and free time.

So I decided to say goodbye to all social media and join substack, which was quite frankly, a very smart decision.

In my first month on substack I read wonderful pieces, looked at beautiful art, and geniunly felt like I am more conscious about the time I spend on my phone.

So I'm sharing three essays I read during this time, essays that inspired me to continue having conversations about them with my loved ones, essays that expanded my thinking, media that stayed with me and did not levae me the moment I passed on from it.

1. things that helped me rebuild my attention span

This essay entails concrete step you can take to revive your attention span. Much has been said about the attention economy so I am not going to repeat any of that, I can however recommend Ayushi Thakkar's low-threshold approach to it. In her essay she offers small, duable steps to reclaiming your own agency over what you pay attention to and what media you consume. I like how accessible the suggestions are, you can start with a small thing that can make a big difference. I already set my phone to greyscale and it changed the way I interact with it completely.

2. Good conversations have lots of doorknobs

Now this is a somewhat "older" substack from 2022. I recently heard a podcast episode featuring the writer and this piece and decided to go read it. The essay sparked a lot of questions and reflections - how do I participate in a conversation? Did it change throughout the years? What do people think of my conversational skills? What kind of morals I associate with certain ways to converse?

I reflected on instances in my past where I've been judged or praised for how I behave during a conversation, what does it say about me, how do I relate to others through talking.

The essay opened a window (or a door) for me to refelct on something that might seem mundane, or that to me, comes rather easily, in a way that wouldn't have been possible without reading it. I also led a few conversations about it with my husband and friends, which meant expanding the circle of impact. I love consuming media that makes us think, individually and collectively.

3. The Role of Storytelling in Systemic Change

We're living through very scray times; full of uncertainty, division, polorization - I don't have to remind you of that, we all live it on a daily basis, experience it in our bones.

This Substack gave me another way to hope for and think of systemic change. Many of us long to shake things up, many of us are having fights with family members about world politics, about the state of the world, wishing they could see eye to eye with us. We read and consume data and information, memorize it to strengthen our argument and then launch what we believe to be the final attack, because how can they still think the way they do after everything we've told them?

Well unfortunately, this is not how changing people's minds works, if it ever does.

That's where storytelling practices come in - not to convince anyone of anything, but to be able to dream and hope for a better future and connect to our humanity.

In this substack Elena Vasileva gives concrete ways to integrate storytelling practices into our lives and work towards changing dominant narratives or stubborn systems. One story at a time.