Draft Four: Thoughts on turning 43

Navigating attention, money, power, suspense.

There are two Twenty One Pilots songs from their new record that I played obsessively this week. Navigating says „Pardon my delay / I’m navigating, I’m navigating my head.” This is what it feels like this morning, on my 43^rd birthday. In process, but messy – navigation needed.

This is the weekend I’m about to put together in a capstone paper some of the ideas I wrote about over the past few weeks: on the role of journalism to create connection, make our lives better, and operate with more care in the world.

I’ll spend less on those ideas here – we shall return, much to change in journalism we have –, and focus on more personal insights.

Let’s start with focus.

You’ve heard this: our attention is being mined by tech companies, we live in an attention economy, and the barrage of stimuli has been messing with our heads. Some studies looking into how much time we spend on one screen say that in 2004 we were focusing on something for 150 seconds. By 2012 that number dropped to 75 seconds. In 2020 it was 47 seconds.

Odds are you’ve already checked an incoming message while reading this. Or that you’ve already left after the first paragraph (sorry!). But it’s not just our ability to focus that’s fucked – it’s also our attention. To the world, to each other. Last weekend, a friend told me she asked her team to stack their phones on the table during a meeting. “We are not kids”, one grumbled as he complied.

Aren’t we? Our pick-ups are unconscious. Catch yourself next time you reach for the phone in a break in conversation, during a lull in a movie, or even at a streetlight. We’re not even aware we’re doing it. We are constantly interrupting ourselves and our own thoughts. We’re not showing up for others, yet we complain incessantly that others are not showing up for us.

Without presence, connection breaks. Whether it’s with the work, or with others.

I have felt this intensely over the past month, juggling way too many projects, never having enough time for anything. The quality of my sleep sucks. The quality of my thinking sucks (I feel it in these letters). The quality of my attention sucks.

We will have to decide collectively what we do about the „fracking of attention”. And I say collectively because this is not just a matter of personal will – personal Instagram and TikTok screentime limits, personal meditation practices, personal cones of silence or whatever. It’s a collective conversation about whether attending to others and the world is still a project worth pursuing.

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Money.

I took on projects in May because yearly taxes wiped me out. I actually had to borrow some money to get the cashflow right before I get paid for some of the work I did. A few things here: yes, the shame of being 43 and not finding a financial balance. Yes, the feeling I’m not responsible and not a grown up. Yes, sorry for the 20 lei (4 euros) lattes and lemon breads – I indulge. Yes, all this against a privileged background of living downtown and owning my apartment, the renovation of which last year emptied my savings account, which I haven’t been able to build back.

Yet, I would have done less if I could afford it. I would have done the same in June, which is just as insanely packed (for the same reasons). But life in Bucharest is horridly expensive, and some of our frazzled attention is the cost of staying. We pay with our attention and our mental health to be here, hoping one day we’ll be secure enough to attend to deep reading, and seeing friends without checking the time. Some are secure enough – they city wouldn’t house all the coffeeshops in the world if they weren’t. But most are not. Journalists, artists, NGO workers are living paycheck to paycheck, hustling on the side, giving stuff up, and wrestling with a weird kind of shame. The shame of having enough compared to some. The shame of not having enough compared to others. The shame of not being able to say “enough” because they have no safety net.

Sure, I can continue living the life I want (and more) if I keep working for international clients that pay 300-400-500 euros for a day of training or consulting or report writing. My last salary when DoR was around was a little over 1.000 euros. I could technically make that in a few days now. But the work I want to do is on the ground, here: train young journalists, edit stories, do pilot projects that center on care, organize gatherings. And there is money for these, too, it’s just that the rate is about the same as the numbers above, but in lei. A few hours consulting with a local newsroom? 350 lei. (70 euros). Teaching at the university once a week as an individual contributor? Never made more than 1.000 lei. (200 euros). Organizing networking dinners for journalists? OK, maybe not this one, as no one pays for that. (Although if you want to, just reply).

You’re so lucky to do work that lifts up your soul, a well-meaning and well-connected lawyer once told me. As opposed to just making money, she meant.

Just to be clear: I’m fine, and I’ll balance, and be responsible again. With the exception of my lemon breads. But this is what bugs me: I want my younger colleagues in the arts, journalism and civil society to still be doing this work when they are 40, and not have do go through a burnout a year doing it. For now, we’ve not found a way. And no – cutting taxes and privatizing the shit out of everything is not a solution if what we want is an equitable state and solidarity. (Which feels out of reach because so many are out to make it and get rich. Capitalism, I know, but let’s ponder the costs more often.)

*

There’s something directly tied to money and capitalism – power. I’ve been wrestling with that for years now. I never sought power, and I didn’t enjoy having it when I ran a newsroom. You see, in Central and Eastern Europe our distance from power is huge (Romania ranks close to the top), which messes with the way we relate to it, and the individuals who have it via a position and title. Even more enlightened leadership crashes against our unspoken norms of what someone in power should do: they should know the answers, they shouldn’t make mistakes, they should protect. All things a good leader will often fail at. And that maintains distance. (Our trust issues and uncertainty avoidance also work against reducing the distance even when one tries.).

I never felt as isolated as when I was responsible for the fate of an organization and the salaries of a staff (knowing that those salaries, while fair and fairly distributed, were not enough for the life they wanted.) I’m still recovering from that loneliness of those times – what helps is seeing others in the region struggle with this, too.

Part of the problem is me. Or not me, per se, but what I was socialized to try to mimic, and the leadership I represent as a straight white man (now also middle aged). And I want to push against this model, because it’s not the only one, and much of it is corrupt. One of the reasons I remain unemployed is that I realized I don’t want to work for the majority of the straight white men running newsrooms in Romania today – we’d be trying to out flex each other from dusk to dawn.

So I’m less interested in having positional power again, but I also understand I can wield the informal power I have to make things happen. And I want to do it by decentering myself as much as possible, and uplifting others, also hoping this would allow us to try new models.

Last week, I heard Iliana Papangeli speak. She is the managing director of Solomon, a tremendous investigative outlet in Greece (and a European Press Prize nominee this year), and a different breed of leader. She was in Bucharest to talk about making mental health a newsroom conversation and shared the following: “To discuss mental health we need to discuss management and leadership in newsrooms. And to discuss a kind of management that allows and provides space for action to be taken on mental health and well-being, we need to change the structure, we need to rethink the way we do things, and use new tools. And I believe feminism is one of the tools for that change”.

We have tried the straight white man model over and over. It mostly isn’t enough. So let’s try some alternatives. Iliana’s newsroom shows this can be done: exceptional work, and creating a space where power is shared, where there is a collective responsibility around how it’s wielded, where we learn from one another and, as she said, where we can “hold space for healing journeys”.

*

I was speaking with a coach I had from my CUNY program over the past months (Mary, you rock!) and she mirrored back to me something I apparently told her on more than one occasion: that my duty, my mission, was to provide others with opportunities. I’ve done this in one form or another for many years, but what’s changing as I’m getting older is that I’m less invested in the outcome. I make the invitation, then I’m trying to hold the process more lightly.

As an editor I am great at spotting stories – not just in the world, but in people’s lives. I can hear the story you should share with the world, or I can help you bring to life projects you think are impossible. At least I can send you off with different questions that open up new avenues for you.

For a long time it hurt when people didn’t accept the invitation or the challenge. I wasn’t disappointed in them, but I did blame myself a lot for what I believed was a missed opportunity: maybe I didn’t phrase it right, maybe I haven’t explained their potential to them well enough etc. I am an ambitious person, and what I now know is that I should meet people where their ambition is. I can’t have more ambition for them than they do; that can be a recipe for heartache.

Today I’m wiser (in theory), because I still see more in others around me than they do. But I’m pushing them less. I’m here if they want the push, the advice and the safety net, but I won’t insist.

*

I’m aware of my shadows, which is the darker side to our luminous qualities. It’s what I’ve always loved in stories: how flawed the heroes are, how unaware of what holds them back, how clueless they can be to the harm they cause, often inadvertently.

What I still struggle with is being kind to myself after I occasionally show up with my  shadow. It’s easy for me to offer grace, to give second chances, to say “yes” to people who take – I believe one day they’ll give back to others, no need to give back to me.

But I go hard on myself. Maybe you do to. We must hold ourselves accountable – being your wonderful love-worthy “authentic self” is not a permission to be a selfish asshole.

“Growing up means, among other things, that I am accountable for my life, my choices, my consequences”, James Hollis writes in Living an Examined Life. “It is not enough to say, ‘I meant well.’ These choices came from me, from the values I professed, from the politicians I elected, the dubious choices I affirmed in the marketplace of ideas.”

Hollis also issues a reminder that this should be liberating, that grace for ourselves is knowing we are accepted, even if we are unacceptable:

“Yes, given the accountability of a thoughtful, conscientious adult, our list of shortcomings is long indeed. And yet, given that we too are only human, sensitive, vulnerable, bound to our wounding history, then why can we not also lend a measure of grace to ourselves as we might readily to others? Since when are we exempt from the human condition? (…)

Is it not a form of peculiar narcissism to fault ourselves even more than others? Is it not a perverse satisfaction to deny to ourselves the grace we can bestow on others? Is it not a failure of love to be unable to love even the unlovable parts of ourselves? The capacity to love our unlovable parts is not an endorsement but a recognition that they are also part of who we are.”

*

Last night I read an essay in Scena9 that broke my heart. It was about a marriage ending after 13 years, two kids and a home full of memories. And music. The music that puts you together as you move forward. The other Twenty One Pilots song I had on repeat this week is The Craving, which is about lead singer Tyler’s wife, Jenna. There is a song for her on each of their albums.

It includes these lyrics: “It’s the fear of the unknown / That cripples every step we take”.

So, in all of the unknown, what are the next steps?

That’s the last idea I’ll touch on. Plot is essential to stories. No tension, no need, no want, no desire, no quest to follow = no story. We tune out. All the resistance to narrative in the world is futile. We always go back to this: what’s next?

Last year when I wrote a birthday letter I was content with meandering. There was a what’s next, but it was fueled by a sense of wide-open possibility.

Things have changed.

I don’t know specifically what’s next, but I can tell I’m making more choices by the day, and the path is becoming clearer. I’m getting slightly restless to know, too, but I try not to fret over the outcome, try not to overengineer or plan.

As Kathryn Schulz writes in this beautiful essay on suspense, “for philosophers, theologians, and everyday people in the throes of midnight or midlife soul-searching, the fundamental question about life is what it means.”

“But for most of us, most of the time, the chief question that life poses is not about its meaning but about its plot. In other words, it is E. M. Forster’s question: What happens next? Will you get the promotion? Who will win the election? Will the woman you took out to dinner last week call you back? Will Jeannie Mae show her face in church on Sunday after what her son was caught doing Friday night?

In life, as in literature, suspense is a response to uncertainties like these – a state of agitation produced by the desire to know what the future holds. Because uncertainty is a fundamental part of the human condition, suspense is central to our emotional landscape.”

Kathryn is getting at two important things in this essay: we love suspense, good luck trying to change that. And also: there’s a difference between suspense when we binge Netflix, and life. When we’re in fictional suspense, we eventually accept the outcome and the answer to the question “What’s next?” – even if it’s bad, even if our favorite character dies or has a setback. (Please take my favorite stressed out chef out of the fridge for season 3 of The Bear).

But in life? In life we need hope. This is why as journalists we also need to provide stories of hope derived from life – because maybe, just maybe, that can be us, or that solutions can bring about a brighter future despite all signs to the contrary. Kathryn:

“We want our fears to prove unfounded and our dreams to come true; we want to be spared life’s many possible devastations and gratified by its revelations and resolutions. This is, perhaps, the tenderest and most hopeful definition of suspense: it is the passionate wish, in the face of omnipresent doubts and dangers, that all will be well in the future.”

So I don’t know what’s next. But I hope it’ll be well.

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SIDE DISH:

Plenty of them in the text above. I’ll add just one, and it’s about the future of journalism in the region, and it will be not just good, but awesome. Together with journalist friends we put together a June Zoom event series on key challenges faced by media leaders in Central and Eastern Europe. Together with our guests from across the world we’ll discuss:

• Funding

• Organizational culture

• Product & tech needs

• Mental health.

It’s a free sign-up, but you’ll have to sign up individually to all of them or pick just the one that sounds interesting. I’ll share more next week.