I like to joke that I-94 and 
I-80 are my second homes. 
I’ve spent thousands of miles 
on them, miles that trade 
scenery for ease — hop on 
and drive, no directions 
needed. The “check engine” 
light on the dashboard of my 
old car kept me company, a 
constant presence lingering 
in the corner of my vision. 
It was accompanied by a 
symphony of other warning 
lights who came and went 
as they pleased. My brain 
felt a lot like that dashboard: 
internal problems and topics 
I didn’t understand sim-
mering away under layers of 
metal and avoidance.

“It’s when the lights aren’t 

flashing that something’s 
actually wrong,” I’d profess 
to nervous passengers with a 
laugh. “She runs just fine.” 

Of course, she didn’t. My car, 
referred to by friends as “the 
Deathbox,” eventually ended 
up in the shop, a mechanic 
instructing my parents to 
never let me drive it again. 
“The frame’s rusted out,” the 
mechanic told them. “If she 
gets hit, the car will basically 
disintegrate.” 

Turns out, an inadvertent 
car crash is what happens 
when you bushwack through 
life on someone else’s rules. 
I’d had warning lights sim-
mering in my body for years, 
finally coming into them-
selves during my first years 

of college. My warning lights 
looked like nervous shots of 
Svedka in my dark kitchen 
while my boyfriend drove 
to my house, my first time 
looming, unspoken, between 
us. It’s easier when you’re 
drunk, obviously. And more 
fun. Or, later, anxiety attacks 
on the cold concrete floor 
of my workplace, my body 
pulled to the ground by guilt 
and shame after hooking up 
with a longtime male friend. 
Or a journal page, folded 
away from even my closest 
friends, where I’d written, “I 
feel as if sex is something I 
owe to my partner — I’m not 
doing it against my will, but 
I don’t understand how it’s 
supposed to make me feel.” 
Or finishing a movie next 
to a boyfriend, wondering 
how long I could watch the 
screensaver camera pan over 
the Sahara before we’d have 
to go to bed. I felt defective. 

I shook during every physi-
cal interaction, a small but 
noticeable tremble, and I 
told partners to ignore it. 

And ignore it, we did. Fol-
lowing my friend’s exam-
ples, I tried everything to fix 
this part of me. I pined after 
a friend for two years, went 
on an almost-blind date that 
turned into a six-month 
relationship, even initiated 
a friends with benefits situ-
ation during my semester 
abroad (trying everything 
doesn’t quite lend itself to 
originality). Each was man-
ageable — which isn’t the 
same as enjoyable.

I thought casual hookups 
would be empowering — 
in a society that profits 
off women’s sexualization 
through advertising but 
punishes them for taking 

ownership of their bodies 
through sex work, casual 
dating and hookup culture 
makes more sense. Women 
don’t need a relationship, 
which deems sex appropri-
ate and private, to enjoy 
themselves. I’ll shout from 
the rooftops about sex 
positivity, and actually have, 
but it wasn’t helping me get 
anywhere.

***

I never had a successful 
relationship in high school, 
and I find it perplexing that 
some people start college 
with zero relationship expe-
rience and others come con-
vinced they’d already found 
their life partner. What an 
odd world to enter: By age 
and education level college 
students are mostly on the 
same page, but emotionally, 
we’re all over the map. 

way, where I don’t start to 
enjoy them until they are 
about to end. Yet unfortu-
nately, this cycle continually 
repeats itself. It’s a sad truth 
that applies to more than just 
books: In life, people tend to 
not enjoy things until they 
are over. 

The problem is that people 
are constantly projecting into 
the future and ruminating 
in the past. We have all be-
come victims of the attention 
economy, one where so much 
available information and 
stimuli has created a huge at-

tention deficit. Hustle porn, 
or the fetishization of over-
working oneself, is another 
force driving people away 
from focusing on the process. 
And of course, our capitalis-
tic attitudes don’t help us de-
ter our attention away from 
results. Even mindfulness, 
the antithesis of capitalism, 
has been exploited for profit.

In her book “How to Do 
Nothing: Resisting the Atten-
tion Economy,” Jenny Odell 
discusses how the very es-
sence of what makes us hu-
man has become threatened 

the piano. Spontaneous sing-
alongs. The salty taste of 
tears.

We lose a lot when we are not 
in the present. 

Before her tragic accident 
in 2012, in her essay “Op-
posite of Loneliness,” Ma-
rina Keegan wrote, “The best 
years of our lives are not be-
hind us. They’re part of us 
and they are set for repeti-
tion as we grow up and move 
to New York and away from 
New York and wish we did 
or didn’t live in New York … 
of course there are things we 
wish we’d done: our read-
ings, that boy across the hall. 
We’re our own hardest crit-
ics and it’s easy to let our-
selves down.”

A tweet I recently read said, 
“I feel like I’m constantly 
worrying about the next part 
of my life without realizing 
that I’m right in the middle 
of what I used to look for-
ward to.” By obsessing over 
everything but the reality in 
front of us, we are depriving 
ourselves of life. Life should 
not (only) be a past experi-
ence or a future plan — it 
should be the now. 

Take a deep breath right now. 
Where are you? Who are you 
with? How do you feel? Why 
are you reading this? 

The practice of being pro-
cess-oriented rather than 
results-oriented 
takes 
in-

tentionality. Resisting forces 
such as the attention econo-
my and the pressure to work 
hard means not only seeing 
the problem but developing 
the strength to fight power-
ful tendencies: Don’t con-
stantly check your phone in 
the car, gaze out the window; 
Don’t fill your weeks with too 
many tasks, welcome what 
each day brings. To focus on 
the process means to find 
success in everything (F you 
capitalism!) — learning from 
failure, accepting an unpro-
ductive day, appreciating the 
little things (as demonstrat-
ed by Big Mouth’s Gratitoad). 

Over time I have discovered 
habits and hobbies that keep 
me grounded, thoughtful and 
intentional.

crease in “time” we now have 
to find new hobbies or to re-
lax has been taken advantage 
of by educators and CEOS 
alike, 
over-assigning 
and 

over-expecting from their 
students and employees. The 
faux luxury of time that the 
pandemic has brought on has 
led to intense burnout and 
dangerously busy schedules.

But it is possible to take back 
the time that has been stolen 
away from us by back-to-
back Zoom meetings and the 
pressure to master crochet-
ing with all the freedom we 
have. Instead of asking what-
ifs, we can focus on what we 
do know — what is right in 
front of us. We can strive to 
be what my therapist calls 
process-oriented, 
rather 

than results-oriented. 

I first noticed this distinction 
as I reflected on my reading 
habits. I always have a par-
ticularly difficult time start-
ing a new book. My selection 
process is unnecessarily long 
and usually leads to option 
paralysis, where there are 
so many choices that I ulti-
mately end up with nothing. 
There are simply too many 
books in the world and so 
little time. This may explain 
why walking into Barnes & 
Noble is simultaneously ex-
citing and sickening. Same 
with The Salvation Army. I 
digress. 

But if I do decide to embark 
on an intimate endeavor 
with literature, my new and 
carefully selected read of-
ten sits on my bedside table, 
lonely, waiting to be touched. 
Sometimes I tease the book 
by picking it up, but this is 
usually just to show a friend 
what I am “currently read-
ing.” And all-too-often, I’ll 
emit the familiar line: “Yeah 
I’m really only on page four 
— haha. So I have nothing to 
report about it yet.” 

And I likely won’t for several 
months. Right now, this book 
is the New York Times best-
seller “Where The Crawdad 
Sings” by Delia Owens. Its 

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Statement
Thursday, August 5, 2021 — 17

Book seduction, meditation 

and other processes

SAMANTHA COLE

Statement Correspondent

This morning I woke up with 
big plans: Go for a long walk, 
catch up on “The Daily” pod-
cast episodes from The New 
York Times, fold my sweat-
shirt pile, call my dad, finish 
a finance problem set, write 
an essay, draft this piece. At 
the crack of dawn (10 a.m.), 
I stepped into my Ugg slip-
pers, stumbled down two 
flights of stairs in an over-
sized grey T-shirt and Mon-
sters Inc. fluffy pants and 
landed in the kitchen. I was 
compelled to walk outside 
and check the weather im-
mediately after being blind-
ed by the sunlight shining 
through the window. To my 
surprise, I was greeted with 
a gentle warm-ish breeze, 
one that felt unfamiliar after 
a chilling Ann Arbor winter. 
I inhaled the welcoming air 
with a deep breath. And then 
I did it again. And again. 

I closed my eyes. I felt calm. I 
felt peaceful. The sun melted 
away my exhaustion.

After what felt like a moment 
of tranquility, my long list 
of morning plans suddenly 
came flooding back into my 
mind. I pivoted my feet to-
wards the door, but some-
thing kept me in place as I 
tried to reenter the kitchen. 
I fed the urge to turn back to 
the sun, close my eyes and be-
gin to breathe slowly again. I 
couldn’t help but smile. I was 
resisting the urge to move, to 
do, to achieve. I was stand-
ing alone in a t-shirt on my 
Joe’s Pizza box-covered back 
porch, and I felt more alive 
than I had in weeks. 

If 2020 has shown us any-
thing, it is that we never truly 
know what to expect in life. 
And while this uncertainty 
naturally leads to feelings 
of stress and anxiety, it also 
gives us space to practice 
being comfortable with the 
unknown. 
This 
so-called 

“space” that I am referring to 
has been a contentious topic 
throughout the pandemic. 
For example, the alleged in-

cover art happens to match 
my cute little purple lamp. 

When I am finally compelled 
to pick the book up, it takes 
a significant amount of time 
for me to focus on the first 
few pages. I often have to 
read them over twice. Five 
or six pages in, I flip forward 
to see when the chapter will 
end. 10 more pages! I can 

do this, I think to cheer my-
self on. I continue reading 
with the goal of finishing a 
chapter. I read with a results 
mindset. 

Flash forward a few weeks 
and I am sitting upright in 
my bed at 3 a.m., my book 
propped 
up 
against 
my 

knees. Now, I turn the pag-
es with less haste and more 
hesitation. I am attached to 
the characters and lost in 
the words on the page. I read 
with a process mindset. 

I try not to read books this 

by the urge towards constant 
productivity.

 “What I’m suggesting is that 
we take a protective stance 
toward ourselves, each other, 
and whatever is left of what 
makes us human,” Odell 
writes. “I’m suggesting that 
we protect our spaces and our 
time for non-instrumental, 
noncommercial activity and 
thought, for maintenance, for 
care, for conviviality. And I’m 
suggesting that we fiercely 
protect our human animality 
against all technologies that 
actively ignore and disdain 

the body, the bodies of other 
beings, and the body of the 
landscape that we inhabit.”

Odell preaches something 
that is essential, especially 
during a pandemic: We must 
do everything in our power 
to focus on our humanity 
and appreciate what comes 
with it rather than fighting 
for what we cannot always 
control. I live for an extra 
hour of laughter at the din-
ner table. The sweet sound 
and serenity of Jimi Hendrix 
on the highway. The passion 
with which my sister plays 

Becoming Alice

ANNIE KLUSENDORF

Statement Correspondent

Maggie Wiebe/Daily

STATEMENT