on healing our attention and what's at stake
a collective issue with unconventional solutions
In this I share some really small strategies that I hope will feel like balm to the present horrors. To make space for us to process, discuss, strategize. To claw back our at the ways we can be so easily lulled into our tiny screens and away from trying to build solidarity or changes in the physical world.
So, make yourself a cup of tea, and if you want me to read to you, press play and enjoy.
Attention. It’s a thing we all recognize we have a deficit of but yet it feels somehow out of our control. That’s by design. We do have control and I want to show you what it looks like to heal your attention, for real.
I’m Mel, and in 2023 I quit my job as an art teacher at Apple, yes that was a real job, to pursue life as an adventure artist, to do stuff like this as often as possible:
a video still, painting in Sequoia National Park
But in the process of pursuing my own work I decided to start a creative retreat center, to help other people heal from tech and connect to their creativity once again.
Becoming an artist, making things with your hands, and finding your own inner magic will make you question everything you’ve been sold on how to find meaning in your life. Art will set you free to find meaning in yourself outside of the systems that want you passive and consuming.
I recognize that this work of discussing attention and healing it on a platform (YouTube) that is absolutely part of the problem feels a little hypocritical, but stay with me for a sec here. because even though this place (YouTube) is absolutely teeming with ragebait that gets way more eyeballs on it than calm films like this, we have a choice to tune out noise and to stop being manipulated by these addictive feeds. But we cannot do it alone.
I recently finished reading Johann Hari’s book Stolen Focus, and I want to read you the quote that I just cant stop thinking about
“We don’t just pay attention as individuals; we pay attention together, as a society.”
This is why I think things like personalnew years resolutions or individualtech breaks often leave us going right back to where we were with 4-6 hours of screen time. myself included! I’ve made videos about this very thing and I fall right back into the pull of my own tiny screen. This is because these spaces, these social media apps, offer us the thing we want most, connection, community, novelty, all locked inside walled gardens designed to addict us. We can’t leave without leaving our people.
So, we need to strategize ways to do this work in solidarity with others, as individual pursuits don’t help the collective to quit.
Especially now in times where so many are talking to their customized ai chatbots, walling themselves off even further from being challenged at all, from witnessing the world, and from building meaningful real-world relationships with humans.
We are all in the midst of unlearning the patterns of screen time from the early pandemic, but putting we’re the blame on ourselves and saying this is just a personal issue to solve.
This ignores the cultural conditions. It ignores that the intention we built with these spaces was to connect with our people. That is the thing that keeps me going back each time I try to stop. Quitting must happen with others.
When I quit Instagram last January, I had a bold ambition that I was a part of a movement away, there was a general rebellion against Meta, a collective action of flight, but it was much, much smaller than I anticipated.
I sacrificed access to the community I built over 12 years and this is why I didn’t just delete my profile. That community matters to me. I have to admit that I now go on there, on a computer — not on my phone — once a week, to see who comes up and I invite them to connect outside the walls of Meta. Some of them join me in zoom rooms and some over in Discord, but if digital is not their thing, we’re doing snail mail, long phone calls, and methods of platform-independent connection.
What I want to make clear here is that we need to work collaboratively to remove our human relationships from these walled gardens and attention traps. Meta loves the lack that I feel in not checking in or losing touch. That company wants me scrolling reels and looking at ads for pants I don’t need. Platform abandonment can lead us to feel deeply disconnected from the people we know want to look at our art, now that we have more time to make it.
But maybe you aren’t an artist, and you’re just here, reading this, because your attention is totally fucked and thats okay too. This is a double edged sword. When you give up watching short form videos, time is suddenly in an abundant supply, but you’re going to feel a void of connection if you do it alone.
You and your people need to be part of this movement away from social platforms together. One of the best things you can do with your people, is something ridiculously simple: It’s walking or hiking, whatever you wanna call it. And even if you’re not in the same physical space doing this on the phone with each other, in different parts of the world is going to feel amazing.
When we walk, we move at a speed that feels like a rebellion in our culture. We’re not moving at the speed of cars, we’re not moving to get somewhere, We’re just walking. When we walk, we can get a view of the world that will open us up to wonder and novelty. Walking is how we rewire and reclaim our attention. If you are in a wheelchair, or have a disability that limits your mobility, many trails are labeled as accessible on google maps, and most times, it’s pretty accurate. For me, a human with an injured spine, sometimes these walks were 100 feet to a bench at the trailhead where I will sit to watch the birds.
a raven sits on a large granite boulder near the Giant Sequoia trees
The wonder and novelty of walking and noticing is what you’re seeing here. It’s the perspective of two people - myself and my spouse Wes Jackson, behind the camera, who go out and notice as often as possible. That is why I paint in plein air. When we walk, we can talk through the fraught political moment without being spied on. We can workshop ideas. Walking is the process through which creativity, and our intuition flows.
I know this probably sounds stupid and gimmicky that this free thing could be the medicine we need to heal from algorithm hell, but seriously this is the thing we need to do as a collective, with others, as often as possible.
Walking is a form of protest. Any time that you spend not on these platforms, you are telling them that you are reclaiming a bit of yourself back.
Disclaimer though, this collective action is not a sport. Walking together isn’t about crushing goals, or stats, or mile counts. That stuff will only hook you deeper into comparison traps and the overwhelming dashboards of individual achievement and self help that will ruin your somatic awareness. I have an essay on why I don’t wear a smart watch anymore I’ll link here.
For Wes and I it will sometimes take us over an hour to go a mile - because there are just too many beautiful things to look at or listen to.
Just look at this place for a moment. See what you notice:
see if you notice any creatures in this shot
In this particular place in Sequoia National Park, I was bearing witness to something big, the burn scars from the 2021 Lightning Complex fires that wiped out an estimated 13-18% of the centuries old Sequoia trees in the world. It makes us realize the tangible threat of extinction as wildfires become more frequent and intense, a thing that could pull me down into deep sadness and grief - which it did, you cant help but be moved by these spaces. However, this grief was tempered by wonder.
When we are moving through times like these where everything feels quite terrible, cultivating wonder, especially with others, feels like a clear act of rebellion. Here among the burn scars and hollowed out trees were saplings, giant lupine plants, and signs of growth and renewal. While there is grief in recognizing many of these forests are forever changed, a fact we can’t ignore, there is peace in noticing that the regrowth showcases that beauty still exists and it’s worth protecting.
a charred snag in Sequoia National Park surrounded by new growth of different species.
But getting trapped inside a custom-tailored infinite scrolling feed feels delicious, it makes our brain feel like it’s being given exactly what it needs. A fabulous meal geared precisely to our tastes. But it is also taking so much from us, pulling us into extreme positions, useless anger, rabbit holes, and at the end of the day its not feeding us the wonder we need in order to cultivate hope and take action as a society. We cant just keep watching things happen and expect things to change.
Social media and AI chatbots are taking us away from the ability to form deep connections with the world we live in, the one that deserves care and protection.
When we focus our attention on noticing, on quiet contemplation, at seeing the different ways that the world around us is being shaped, changed, and shifted, we move towards our childlike sense of wonder. When we walk slowly in the forest, or just in our neighborhoods, we can notice things that wake our heart up. The shapes of trees, leaves, the architectural details, we can start to listen to and familiarize ourselves with birdsong. These things are all around us, all the time, but we never take the time to notice.
I want to present a challenge to you and to those you want to invite to focus on two things this year. The first, is to try and start a practice of walking or rolling, or just noticing in nature without looking at your phone. It’s okay if that is just around your block to start or you begin with tiny adventure near a local lake, park or open space. Do it with your community as often as you can. See what you all notice, write it down or sketch it, and then compare notes.
Then, my second challenge to you: carry a pocket notebook. Just this change alone has reduced my screen time from a 4 hour average, down to about an hour and a half a day. And I didn’t buy some fancy leather-bound notebook, I made one myself with a stapler and some paper from the dollar store. I’ll even link you to a video on how to do this yourself. The less you spend on this, the better.
So, what am I doing with that 90 minutes or so I spend on my phone everyday? I’m on Discord, talking to the people on the Persistent Bloom server, which is free btw, recognizing that the work of building and maintaining these collectives of noticers takes work, but its beyond worth it.
I’ll leave you with a quote from one of my favorite books i’ve read so far this year on this topic Together - A Manifesto Against a Heartless World by Ece Temelkuran
a hand painted scan of me writing this quote out for use in the video, and to put on the wall of my studio.
“the world is rediscovering the taste of decisive attention, and the possibility of replacing anger with resistance against distraction. This may be because we are all beginning to realize that this time things are serious enough to demand our attention.
It might benefit all of us to realize systematically forcing the individual to misplace their attention is a hallmark of fascism. Its unending bizarre spectacles, and the reaction to each of those infinite absurdities exhausts the individual, finally beating them into an irreversible daze. Maybe we need to understand that we are now all in a survival state and there is no room left for anger”
Think about this before diving into a video essay that will disregulate you. I think we are all now faced with an opportunity to engage our sense of wonder, invite our community to do it with us, and seek out points of connection off these platforms by disentangling the ways that surveillance capitalism keeps us locked in, spied on, and feeling hopeless.
If you loved the things I shared in this, consider connecting with me off this platform by signing up for my newsletter, joining my Discord, or browsing the classes I am currently offering. I don’t take sponsorships or free stuff from brands here and am entirely viewer supported through patron level subscribers on Substack, students who sign up for my classes, and folks who buy my art and zines.
Thank you for reading, and until next time, stay creative and find your own ways to persistently bloom.
If you really enjoyed this, consider watching the film I made in collaboration with my partner, Wes Jackson. We shot all the footage in Sequoia National Park last September and they feel quite lovely together.
If thats not your thing, or you aren’t watching videos right now, respect! I’m doing my best to gently avoid any and all short form videos in 2026 — including the ones people send me (sorry!) Algorithmic short form feeds are so addictive for me and I get that we are all building new boundaries with social media and tech tools of all kinds as we navigate our attention in this new era of extremism and surveillance.
Earlier in the week, I sent out a longer dispatch with some links and a creative exercise for the artists in the room, but I know that isn’t all of you. If you’re curious to know more about the things I am doing, explore my website, look through the archive here, and tell me your thoughts using this magic survey:
As always, a reminder that all of my work is supported by readers like you. I’d love to share bonus writing and photo reference albums with you here. If you don’t have extra cash to contribute to patronage, liking this post is a simple way to say “thanks Mel”
Thank you for reading, and being here. I’ll leave you with a photo of the painting on my easel this week:
a painting loosely based on the shape of a persistent Sequoia Tree (mostly hollowed with green still in its canopy)
