My creative lesson 29 — How to hack your attention to detail
21 July 2020
Our challenge this week at 52Frames was “Details” and it straight away placed me into a details noticing mode.
I paid more attention to the sweet and cool taste of a freshly cut watermelon. Once again I appreciated the wonderful feeling of lying down on a bed with clean white sheets. I noticed the fluffy green foliage of the treetops that reach our balcony and how quickly condensation forms on a glass of ice cold water.
Isn’t it funny how one thing opens up your eyes to something brand new or something that was right under your nose the entire time?
This is a bit similar to frequency illusion when you start to notice all the occurrences of something that caught your attention for some reason. Let’s say that you just bought a red Mazda and now suddenly you notice that there are thousands of red Mazdas all over the place. The Mazdas have always been there but only now you are finally noticing them.
This was the same for me with the details challenge. My world is filled with a million pieces of small and beautiful details and yet I only noticed them when I was looking for something to photograph this week.
This is a bit sad but it is also a good thing.
In the big picture of living in our busy lives, it is good that our brain filters out unnecessary and useless details. There are so many things to learn and to remember that it is impossible to use brain space for EVERYTHING.
Though it is also a bit sad because I do not see all these tiny details that make up the background of my life. How can you live a full life if you do not experience the minuscule building blocks of said life?
You can join a photo group such as 52Frames that will force you to focus every single week on something different. But you don’t have to stop there. You can also join an art class or a cooking class or any other creative endeavor where your peers/colleagues will teach you new things to pay attention to. They may even point your attention to old details that you learned to unsee.
Or you can take yourself on one of those weekly artist dates that Julia Cameron talks about in her book, “ The artist way”. Our brains love new things. There is nothing like going to new places and having new experiences to discover new and gorgeous small details.
Maybe one should not expect to do anything with all the details in your life. Old or new. Just take a moment to notice and experience them and then move on. If they make a big enough expression, do something with it (like take a photo!) but otherwise just see them and go on to the next thing.
The details album had quite an effect on me. I loved how it placed me in details noticing mode. It was also awesome to see all the wonderful details the Framers photographed this week. We all notice such different and wonderful small details.
It made me decide to take a moment, or few, throughout my day to pay attention to my senses and ask myself these questions:
What am I smelling?
What am I seeing?
What am I feeling?
What am I tasty?
What am I hearing?
My husband and I went to the beach today and discovered a large nearly drained puddle filled with wet sea salt.
It was pretty cool to see but I wanted to ‘explore’ it further and so I grabbed a handful of the coarse salt and tasted a few grains. It was really salty! The rest I rubbed against my legs like an organic and natural, and very cheap, skin rub.
At first I thought I made the mistake of my life because my natural skin rub smelled a bit ..umm fishy. Luckily the smell didn’t linger and my skin felt extra-smooth after a rinse in the sea.
I wanted to engage more of my senses and in the end enjoyed an amazing and much richer experience. And I am pretty sure that now I am going to visit the salt puddle every time we go to that beach.
It will not always be possible to deepen the experience of a detail by using all of your senses. Some details are meant to be just noticed, acknowledged and then be allowed to weave into the mosaic of your life.
Others we should linger over a little more because how can you live a life without experiencing the building blocks of that life too?
So smell the coffee AND drink it.
Have your cake AND eat it.
Run your fingers over a rose and photograph it.
Look for the details in your life and see them.
belong to this photo group called 52Frames where we have to take a photo and upload it every week. (It is 100% free to join but take note that the deadlines are strict.) Plodding along every week getting my weekly photo has taught me a lot about creativity.
My other creative endeavors are writing words, writing code and messing around with drawings and fiber art.
Here are a few of my other creativity lessons:
My creative lesson 26 — Sometimes a flashlight is just a flashlight OR sometimes apples are red
My creative lesson 27 — Allow your subconscious to think for you
