Attention as Devotion to Life

Notes on collapse and complicity; living inside systems that profit from distraction

Hello dear Wayfinders

This is the first in a loose series of essays exploring attention and what it means to live with care and responsibility in these times. I don’t have conclusions to offer, only questions I keep returning to and a desire to think them through on the page.

In a world on the edge of collapse, I’m alarmed by how the need for convenience and extraction are becoming more prevalent, not less so.

If we keep struggling and scrolling, and our attention is constantly interrupted, monetised or hijacked, we will lose sight of what actually matters.

Our attention is currency, and it is being stolen from us. And our attention is also how we demonstrate our values, how we consciously consent and are complicit in the systems that we feel trapped in. Our attention directs our most precious resources of time and energy.

In a recent essay, I wrote about a desire to re-analogue my life. Since then, I’ve noticed a growing chorus of voices declaring this as the next big trend for 2026; I want to be very clear here, and say that this is not where I’m coming from. ’m not interested in analogue living as an aesthetic, nor as a new category of things to buy.

I’m not advocating for a rejection of the digital world! Whilst my form of escapism is fantasising about disappearing to live off-grid in a forest, I know I have a responsibility to contribute to turning this terrible tide before it sweeps us all away. There is no privileged off-grid utopia that is going to offer anyone sanctuary in these times!

What I’m describing is something I’ve been practising, clumsily and imperfectly, for a long time. A quiet resistance to being taken over by technology and by the lure of convenience. I live and work in the world as it is. I use digital tools daily. I value the ways they allow connection across the tyranny of distance, and particularly so in seasons of illness or grief.

I find myself increasingly attentive to how little consent is required for our attention to be claimed and how easily this becomes normalised.

This awareness has been shaped, in part, by running an online business for many years. When social media first became widely available as a way of sharing our work, it felt like a gift. We had a way to reach and connect with people without the costs and gatekeeping of older advertising and marketing models. Many of us experimented with new ways of communicating, gathering, and offering our work. We were exploring values alongside visibility, and it genuinely felt possible to do things differently.

Over time, the costs of this visibility became clearer. Not in a dramatic, single moment, but gradually. Platforms that promised connection were also shaping behaviour. Attention became currency. Our data became something to be captured and sold.

Even when we are using these tools willingly, and perhaps joyfully at times, it is worth asking what is being extracted, and on whose terms.

In my own life, I am parenting a twelve-year-old boy, while also helping care for ageing parents with complex health needs. These are seasons of life that cannot be rushed or optimised. They require attention that can stay with what is repetitive and emotionally demanding, and also unpredictable. They ask for presence that is steady, rather than convenient.

I still (currently) use these platforms. I still share snippets of my work there. Activists use them. Amidst the noise and misinformation and disinformation, they are tools for organising and gathering, and finding each other.

I’m not interested in closing my accounts as a performance (although I have previously done so, and returned!). What I am interested in is discernment; in noticing when tools begin to use us more than we are using them. I am curious about how we might remain in relationship with these platforms and tools, without letting them colonise our lives entirely. But if colonisation is the system we are trapped in, how do we escape?

We are living through multiple forms of collapse; ecological systems are under strain; political structures are breaking; justice and legal frameworks are failing. Every day there is another tragedy, storm, shooting and worse, filling our feeds. These, rightly, demand our attention, but can become just more content rather than igniting action.

We are carrying a low, constant hum of grief alongside the ordinary demands of work and care. Attention is not neutral.

What we repeatedly turn towards shapes not only our inner lives, but the kinds of worlds we help to sustain.

For a long time, I thought of attention as something I needed to manage better. If only I could set firmer boundaries, be more disciplined, be more intentional, then perhaps I would feel less scattered. What I’m coming to understand is that attention is a form of devotion. It reveals what we orient our lives around, often more honestly than our stated beliefs.

Over time, it shapes who we become, and how we show up for one another.

I have long been drawn towards ways of living that are slower, and often less convenient. This is not because slowness is inherently virtuous, but because speed so often carries costs that are rarely borne fairly. Convenience is not free. Someone, somewhere, takes the hit or absorbs the impact for our ease.

Learning to tolerate a measure of inconvenience has become, for me, a way of staying awake to that reality, rather than smoothing it over.

Part of this is simply buying less, choosing carefully when we do need to buy and where possible not buying from business models that rely on endless growth and extraction (which is a privilege because we have access to many community resources, and local, small businesses at this point)! It is also about a wider responsibility to the planet and to each other; paying closer attention to where things come from, who benefits, and who bears the costs that have been cleverly hidden from us. It has meant stepping away, where possible, whilst accepting that we are still living within the systems that we’re trying to escape.

It is about embracing practices that don’t translate into content! Making and mending rather than replacing (yes, some people do create mending content - my mending does not look like that!). Preparing food slowly (in a not beautiful enough for Instagram kitchen in a damp rented cottage). Walking without tracking my heart rate or counting steps! Spending time with art that asks something of me in return. Reading widely.

It is about remembering that our lives are not content or data, and can be lived in service to community; remembering that community is often inconvenient, and belonging is a practice!

This is an ongoing attempt to live with greater congruence between what I value and how I spend my days. It is unfinished; responsive to the realities of care, work, and relationships. It is also singed with guilt for still living in safety, and infused with grief for all that has already been lost.

I’m planning on sharing a series of short reflections on specific practices that are shaping my attention as we navigate 2026. These are things I already do, things I’m returning to, and things I’m experimenting with as part of this wider inquiry. Some are deeply ordinary. Some have a political edge. Some are active resistance. Some are in service to imagining what might be possible for us. We’ll see where it goes.

I am also exploring these questions in my circle work, where they can be held collectively and over time. If you’re interested in that side of the work, our next open Circle is on Monday 23rd February with the theme of Remembrance and The Commons begins in March.

For now, this essay is simply a place to wrestle with some thoughts on the page and to open the comments for your reflections and experiences and hopes; to share the questions and enquiries that are keeping us awake at night and finding ways to tend to what truly matters.

With you in Circle

In these times and always