Clock Time and Jenny Odell
reading as work/play
A note about engagement: Like many, I constantly struggle with the balance between participation in vs. abstention from the online world. It can be farcical how often “engagement” results in isolation and I’m not on social media mostly because I’m susceptible to addictive things. I’m also writing a book. I want people to know about it and read it. Many of you regularly say nice things in person and via text and in emails about the things I write. There will never be a replacement for these one-on-one real life exchanges and please do not stop. Also, part of getting an agent (and a book deal) is being able to show digital evidence that people want to hear what I have to say. This is a newsletter which also has a website with a findable archive. So if “liking” and “commenting” are not against your religion, consider doing those things here on the internet where others can see. And please share the newsletter. Thank you.
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Reading is something I’ve always gone through phases with. I remember hours of disappearing into fictional worlds as a kid, but also plenty of time drawing and making friendship bracelets. Reading aloud in class was always easy for me, as was interpreting written assignments, but I can’t think of any titles I couldn’t live without in middle or high school. The books I got for graduation sat unread for years. By my early 20s, there were a few sacred texts, like Letters to a Young Poet, that I underlined religiously and carried around in my purse, but for most of my life I haven’t thought of reading as play, even though the exchange of ideas is what fuels me and it’s probably safe to say most of who I am has been shaped by books.
Not reading much in adulthood makes sense because parenting and screens and alcohol and productivity-worship. I did read a lot when I was constantly nursing a new infant, and I usually devour books on vacation. Those are easy to explain: while breast-feeding, reading was secondary to something useful I was already doing, and vacation is supposed to melt the clock.
I first heard learned about Jenny Odell last year on Jon Favreau’s podcast Offline (highly recommend). After listening to her talk about her book How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, I ordered myself a jewelers loupe, a mini magnifying glass jewelers use for studying gems, but Odell uses on walks around her neighborhood to activate a sense of awe and wonder. For a few weeks, my daughter and I would go out together and inspect the moss and grass up close, amazed by the infinite details. The practice soon faded and it’s been sitting next to our bowls and drinking glasses for at least 9 months.
When I saw Odell’s newest book, Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock, on the shelf in my local bookstore, I snatched it up. In part because of the cover’s colors. And because play.
In the past week, I’ve made significant progress on my book proposal. I haven’t finished the list of comparable titles with notes on how my book differs, so I have a stack to read. Since that reading is now “work” and a “should,” I’m resisting. They’re all books I’m totally interested in reading, but there’s a goal so they can’t be play. It reminds me of working out: I truly enjoy the feeling of doing each exercise, like the music, like how I feel after, but if I let the the element of “should” in, it becomes an impenetrable wall and I never begin.
I write this newsletter because I know play is always the answer yet constantly forget. So I decided Jenny Odell and “life beyond the clock” would be my play, since it’s what I’ve been evangelizing for most of late. It’s transcendence.
I’m still rereading the introduction, where Odell discusses philosopher Josef Pieper’s 1948 book, Leisure, the Basis of Culture, in which he describes the difference between “work time,” a horizontal, a forward-leaning slog peppered with occasional rest periods, and “true leisure,” which exists on a “vertical axis of time.” Odell continues:
. . . I doubt burnout has ever been solely about not having enough hours in the day. What first appears to be a wish for more time may turn out to be just one part of a simple, yet vast, desire for autonomy, meaning, and purpose. Even when external circumstance or internal compulsion forces you to live entirely on Pieper’s horizontal axis—work and refreshment-for-more-work—it remains possible to harbor desire for the vertical realm, that place for the parts of our selves and our lives that are not for sale.
This is everything. It describes depression and addiction and probably most human suffering: a hunger for the vertical axis without a map, or maybe the permission, to get there. This describes my life before becoming a writer. It also gets to the heart of why I’m writing Juno’s House Rules: if this understanding of dual time continuums was at the forefront for everyone, how radically different might our relationships look?
(Optional) Assignment:
Go outside and get down on the ground and spend at least five minutes observing something up close. Odell describes how she studied moss, walking around Oakland “like a pedestrian conspiracy theorist, peering at things from odd angles.” Do that. Look at a crack in the sidewalk, or a leaf that seems smooth. If you don’t look a little weird doing this, you’re probably not close enough. Maybe get a jewelers loupe and keep it in your coat pocket.
I had a moment the other night while watching a friend play live music on a stage, where I realized that that was the first moment in a long while that I was purely sitting down, not "doing" anything. No phone, no internet, no distraction, just pure pleasure of the present moment. Play.
It is a wonderful privilege to get to know you as an adult through your writing, my dear Rose Red. 🥰