Focus Your Attention

How to resist overwhelm in an overwhelming world

Hey y’all. What a time we’re in. It’s A LOT.

It’s easy to get overwhelmed. Of course we want to distract ourselves from feeling scared, lost, out of control. But where does endless social media, binge watching netflix and eating an entire cheesecake in one sitting get us? Nowhere good, that’s for sure. What does help us feel hopeful, creative, connected? MAKING SOMETHING.

That is what we are going to do this week.

Consider this week a booster shot for those of us who wonder, “What can I do??” and a dose of motivation to get involved in a way that feels right for you.

With that, let’s take a deep breath together. Smile. And get started.

Time to FOCUS

FOCUS poster, created by Courtney Martin and me in 2017.

In 2017, my dear friend, the writer

Courtney Martin

(and recent podcast conversationalist) and I were bereft over USA’s political and social landscape. We were overwhelmed, scared, sad and generally paralyzed. Courtney writes (and draws.) I draw (and write.)

What could we do?

One afternoon we sat at her kitchen table and made a creative manifesto for hard times. And all times, really. It started with the idea of giving people an assignment to focus. And that the focus would be prominent. The rest of it flowed from there.

Here is the text:

This is your assignment.

Feel all the things. Feel the hard things. The inexplicable things, the things that make you disavow humanity’s capacity for redemption. Feel all the maddening paradoxes. Feel overwhelmed, crazy. Feel uncertain. Feel angry. Feel afraid. Feel powerless. Feel frozen. And then

FOCUS.

Pick up your pen. Pick up your paintbrush. Pick up your damn chin. Put your two calloused hands on the turntables, in the clay, on the strings. Get behind the camera. Look for that pinprick of light. Look for the truth (yes, it is a thing—it still exists.)

Focus on that light. Enlarge it. Reveal the fierce urgency of now. Reveal how shattered we are, how capable of being repaired. But don’t lament the break. Nothing new would be built if things were never broken. A wise man once said: there’s a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in. Get after that light.

This is your assignment.

We dug into our pockets and commissioned letterpress printer James Lang to create a series of the posters in different colors. We packaged them up and mailed them to bookstores and libraries around the country, inviting people to stop by and pick one up for free. We mailed them to friends. When we ran out, we turned them into a print on Society 6, and sold them with all proceeds going to Hedgebrook, a women’s writers retreat in the Pacific Northwest, raising over 10k to support art/writing residencies for people with financial barriers. People kept buying them, so we took the left over money and gave away four micro-grants to artists working on social impact art projects in the Bay Area.

Someone read it at a graduation. Another person read it at a funeral. An elementary school Principle bought it at a fundraiser for her brother.

To this day, people still send us photos of the print hanging in classrooms, dorm rooms, bedrooms and beyond.

Amnoni Myers, writer and speaker, author of You Are The Prize

If you would like a FOCUS poster, we’ve made prints available again for purchase on Society 6 in Black/White, Red/White/Blue, and Rainbow. Make sure you choose the right size in the dropdown menu, it can be kind of tricky. Courtney and I will donate a percentage of the profits to Advocates for Trans Equality, an incredible organization fighting for the legal and political rights of transgender people in America.

The success of this project makes me wonder: how do we strike a nerve with our work? How do we use words to touch and inspire people? There’s a secret:

Speak from your deepest truth.

When we feel compelled to say something, to do something, when we feel MOVED to act by something larger than ourselves, there is a very, very good chance we are not alone in that feeling.

In that moment, artists MAKE something.

When someone — an artist usually — does something in a moment like that, it often connects with other people who feel that same way. Maybe they are too busy/fearful/timid/tired to do or say something themselves, and your words are a gift to them, helping them articulate the nuances of their gut feels.

When we are moved to speak our deepest truth, we do not only speak for yourself.

That’s it. That’s the secret.

Writer and publisher of The Marginalian Maria Popova holds her copy of the FOCUS poster.

So here’s what we’re going to do…

Assignment: What’s your FOCUS?

Before we look outside, we first have to look INSIDE.