Deeper

In search of lost flow, in writing and life

Pozzo di San Patrizio, Orvieto. Image from Orvieto Viva.

I’ve never had Covid. I feel jittery saying that, like I’m jinxing myself. Tocca ferro. (In Italy we say “touch iron” instead of “knock on wood.”) Even so, I’ve changed since the onset of the pandemic, in ways I couldn’t have imagined at the time. And not for the better.

I call what I’m experiencing “mental long Covid,” with no offense meant to those who have suffered or are suffering from the disease itself. My problem, best described as brain fog, has two causes, I think—one, the long periods of isolation, and two, the constant doomscrolling as the pandemic unfolded, a practice that, for me, became far too ingrained. Now toss in those lockdown years of incessant obsessing about my loved ones’ health and feeling traumatized by politics, always on alert for the next blow; then add the nosedive my never-stellar memory has taken, and the stakes are higher than ever, especially when language learning is a priority. Not to mention writing a novel. Some of the decline is due to aging, no doubt. But most of it, I’m convinced, is due to brain fog.

Here’s what I feel like most of the time, these past few years—like I’m living my life on the surface, skimming without fully consuming, moving from task to task, lacking the focused thought needed to get beyond the superficial. Of course any large, in-depth project—like a novel, say—needs to be broken down, simplified; we need to work backward from the vision of that final product, whatever it is, to the parts, the steps, needed to get there. Yet too much time spent tending to the piecemeal shreds the whole cloth of life. I’m searching for balance, a weighted wholeness. Basically, I miss being able to conceptualize.

And reading—how I miss the ease with which I used to disappear into a book, the joy of experiencing someone else’s life at someone’s else pace. I can still do it, but only if the book grabs me with two-inch talons; anything less and I tend to put the book down and wander off. Or I skim, unable to engage and thus become impatient, eager for the next one. Unfortunately, I learned to speed-read as a kid, forced into a program I didn’t ask for, one that fed a natural tendency I have to rove, search, move on. Though I’m sure my parents were convinced the skill would give me an educational edge, speed-reading did not serve me well. You cannot speed-read a text on organic chemistry; you cannot linger in a novel, appreciating the structure and beauty and meaning of a sentence. Years ago, I had to relearn how to read deeply, and now I need to relearn again.

Brain fog has affected my writing too. I’m staring down draft two of my third novel, and it’s staring back, distant and aloof. This book needs to go deeper than it does, needs to shake things up. Or rather, I need to make it shake things up. Somewhere, amid the dog walks and language study and errands and home improvement projects and travel fantasies, there’s a deeper plane of existence that, lately, I’m not very good at finding. If I can’t go there, and stay, and plumb its layers, then this new book won’t be worth writing. Because this book wants to be something more profound than what I’ve managed to put on the page so far.

All this, I think, is the long-term result of Covid lockdowns, of safety within walls. Of isolation. Of a fractured, scattered attention span.

Isolation isn’t equivalent to confinement within walls; it has long-term effects I never foresaw. During the lockdowns (which, I might add, I condoned as a necessary evil) I became isolated in my body, in the bubble of airspace around me, a separateness so extreme that when my sons and I embraced after two and a half years of separation, their touch felt strange to me. How could that be, when once I carried their bodies in mine, when their cells floated in my bloodstream for decades? Now, when I hug a friend—not the touch of a shoulder or a fleeting half embrace, but a real hug, an exchange of emotions, of body heat—that simple act makes me realize there is more to life than I allow myself to experience these days. I’m living on the surface.

That sense of isolation might be why, a few months ago, I suddenly felt the need to be in water—me, an avowed hater of swimming and pools. Even in water only a few meters deep, it’s possible to feel submerged, consumed. You cannot skim something that touches every inch of your body, that holds you even though you must keep moving. Go deep if you like, but keep moving; stop and you die. It’s perpetual movement that brings no change, only sameness—the sense of resistance, the timing of breath and submersion, the uniformity of color, smell, temperature. It’s a form of focus.

I read an interesting article in The Guardian, by author/journalist Johann Hari, called “Your Attention Didn’t Collapse. It Was Stolen,” adapted from his book Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention and How to Think Deeply Again. According to Hari, “we are living in a serious attention crisis—one with huge implications for how we live. I learned there are twelve factors that have been proven to reduce people’s ability to pay attention and that many of these factors have been rising in the past few decades—sometimes dramatically.”

Some of those factors are big-picture issues that demand the attention of governments worldwide, such as the effects of chemical pollution on our bodies and minds. Others are things we, as individuals, can change—the “switch/cost effect,” for example. According to MIT neuroscientist Earl Miller, whom Hari interviewed, we may think we’re multitasking, but we’re really not; we’re constantly switching between two or more areas of focus. Every time we switch tasks—Hari gives the example of interrupting our work to read a text—our brains have to reconfigure. “[I]f you check your texts while trying to work,” Hari writes, “you aren’t only losing the little bursts of time you spend looking at the texts themselves—you are also losing the time it takes to refocus afterwards, which turns out to be a huge amount.”

Stress and fatigue fracture our attention spans too, particularly the chronic exhaustion caused by thinking we must always be available to our bosses, our families, maybe even our friends. (France has addressed this very 21st-century problem with a new law, the “right to disconnect,” which protects workers from having to always be on the job, in a sense.) It’s not easy, but we can combat stress and fatigue by setting our own limits and finding effective ways to relax.

To attempt to reclaim his focus, Hari went on a retreat during which he gave up all forms of digital communication. The result wasn’t what he expected. Though he was calmer, he missed the instant gratification, the dopamine kick, of getting “likes” and emojis and comments. He realized he needed to find another form of gratification, and for that he turned to that most gratifying state of all, flow—being so immersed in what you’re doing that time disappears.

Another article I read, this one called “Read any good books?” at Understandably by Bill Murphy Jr., brings good news for those of us with subpar memories: the best way to improve one’s memory—better even than crossword puzzles and other word games—is to read. Apparently an eight-week-long study involving 76 older adults proved that reading for 90 minutes five days a week improves memory significantly. Huzzah!

What am I doing with this new knowledge? I’m taking a four-pronged approach. I’m prioritizing reading (90 minutes a day, at least five times a week, yeah!) and resuming a long-ago-discarded meditation practice, which will hopefully punch up my ability to focus. And I’m decreasing the time I spend on social media, which is as hard as I thought it would be, given its addictive nature. (So far I’m down 10 percent. Gotta do better!) Most important, though—and so far I’m failing miserably—is to train myself to do one task without interruption. After decades as an overworked editor facing a daily onslaught of emails and Slack messages, I’m an expert multitasker—whoops, I mean task switcher. But now those messages can wait—except the ones from my kids; I mean, there are limits—but yeah, the rest can wait. I’ve got better things to do, like trying to get back into a flow state.

As with so much in life, what’s needed is balance. And with that in mind, I have an announcement: from now on, in general, you’ll be hearing from me every other Wednesday instead of weekly. I’ve found that Italicus occupies a huge amount of my brain space—planning, writing, revising, mentally editing even when I’ve pronounced a letter done—so much so that since I launched Italicus I haven’t managed to get back to my novel-in-progress. The good news is that in writing these letters I’ve gotten into a flow state more than a few times. Still, balance, balance, balance.

Digital life vs real life; brain fog vs clarity and depth. In both cases, I’m shooting for option two. And succeeding can only enrich my writing.

How about you? Can you focus, go deep, find that flow state, remember? If so, please tell me what helps you submerge.

Alla prossima,

Cheryl

© 2023 Cheryl A. Ossola

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Book of the week (chosen because I disappeared into it completely and read it compulsively for several days. Ahhhhhh!):

• The Book of Lost Light by Ron Nyren

Poem of the week (today’s letter is the near-direct result of reading a poem by Maggie Smith called “Walking the Dog,” from her collection Goldenrod.  I can’t find it online, so here it is):