Do you miss your attention span?

In an underpass, someone spray painted, “Let’s love our community” in black paint on a white backdrop.

We’ve been feeling the ground shifting at Firefly.

It usually looks something like this:

“I really want to be here, but my head is pounding.”
”I’m trying to make it to class, but my kid is is having an anxiety attack.”
”I just can’t seem to focus enough to write more than little bit.”

The heart of our work — small groups, meeting for long stretches — is being rocked by the impact of years of sustained stress.

I mean, of course, right? None of us are surprised by this. We’re feeling it too. There’s a new level of existential exhaustion in the air this spring, a collective bend in the road that has got us thinking about how we can support you newly.

There’s so much research to explain this.

Lately I’ve been digging the work of Nadine Burke Harris, who was one of the first people to connect childhood stressful events to long term health to our ability to focus.

Others have built on this to show how even mild stress can impact our ability to pay attention to things for sustained periods. Australian psychiatrist Jon Jureidini puts it so clearly in Johann Hari’s book Stolen Focus:

“Narrowing your focus is a really good strategy in a safe environment, because it means you can learn things and flourish and develop. But if you are in a dangerous environment selective attention [when you focus on just one thing] is a really dumb strategy. What you need instead is to evenly spread vigilance across your environment.”

Does that sound like you these days? I know it sounds like me, my brain skittering like a minnow from one place to another, my attention span like a basket of puppies.

We’re living through a years-long collective trauma. War, the devastating impact of Covid-19 especially on already-marginalized communities, terrible leadership, constant fear. We’re tired. Focusing is hard, and may sometimes be impossible.

But, we still want to make things.
We still want to show up to this fragile world with the best of ourselves.
We still know that the right words in the right order are one kind of salvation.

How do we work with what is available to us?

We have one idea.

Every weekday at 9am, we get on Zoom and offer a writing prompt and then 20 minutes of quiet writing time in our program Morning Coffee Sessions. It’s my favourite pandemic innovation.

The idea is just to fill our mornings with tiny opportunities to gather, scribble, breathe, and then walk away. To create. To remember what it’s like to create.

You can use them to deepen a workshop experience, or you can do them on their own. Drop in for as many as you like. All you need is a Zoom account.

All the info on Morning Coffee Sessions is here.

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And a little note from Coach Britt!

I just wanted to thank you all from my whole heart for your kindness and support during some truly dark days. I finished active cancer treatment at the end of March, and am focused on rebuilding my energy. I'm now happily back in my role at Firefly, and am feeling hopeful and grateful for each of you.

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Alright, beautiful human.

Let’s be with what’s true, love up our minds for what they can still do for us, and make things in all the ways we still can.

In it with you,