Reading the Rocks (essay) (2024)“You are only here for a short visit. Don't hurry, don't worry and be sure to smell the flowers along the way.” -Walter Hagen In How To Do Nothing, trying to describe a finer sense of attention, I wrote about the embarrassing moment in which I learned that my mom speaks three languages, not two. I hadn’t known this because I couldn’t distinguish Tagalog from Ilonggo. Last year, I picked up Spanish again after learning it in high school, and I find myself experiencing the same perceptual proliferation. What once sounded simply like “people speaking Spanish” has begun to resolve into something not only more specific, but completely different in conceptual quality: the immense difference between “things” and “things that mean something,” or between a collection of sounds and a familiar word. At my beginner’s level, I sometimes get caught off guard when I understand a whole Spanish sentence that I overhear on the street. It’s as though I’m unprepared for meaning to appear out of what was previously noise. What I particularly liked about this essay was the familiarity of Ms Odell’s experience. An inveterate walker, I too have developed that sense that the environment/terrain/flora/fauna/whathaveyou is communicating with us. For me it wasn’t geology but mycology that did the trick. The dog and I walk a 6-8 mile loop that’s about half town/campus and half woods/pond/brooks and the latter, in particular, is rotten with fungi. And the thing is, once you notice the first couple you notice that there are myriad others you’d just been walking past without noticing. At that point, you can’t help but be on the lookout, be more aware of your surroundings. I have little time or patience for the whole “mindfulness” craze, as it seems too artificial and ideological to warrant much consideration. But I’m a proselytizer for the idea of getting out for a walk and liberating your mind from the humdrum for a couple hours. Smell the flowers. Read the rocks. Spot the toadstools. Let meaning appear and take notice. (Reviewed:) Grade: (B+) Tweet Websites:-WIKIPEDIA: Jenny Odell -AUTHOR SITE: jennyodell.com -AUTHOR SITE: Bureau of Suspended Objects (Tumblr) -TWITTER: @the_jennitaur -BLUESKY: @jennitaur.bsky.social -AUTHOR PAGE: Jenny Odell (Penguin Random House) -AUTHOR PAGE: Jenny Odell (Felicity Bryan Associates) -ENTRY: Jenny Odell (GoodReads) -ENTRY: Jenny Odell (Recology) -INDEX: Jenny Odell (LitHub) -INDEX: Jenny Odell (To the Best of Our Knowledge) -INDEX: Jenny Odell (The Believer) -VIDEO INDEX: “jenny odell” (YouTube) -INDEX: Jenny Odell (Orion) -INDEX: Jenny Odell (Open Space) -INDEX: Jenny Odell (Medium) -INDEX: Jenny Odell (Sierra) -INDEX: Jenny Odell (The Atlantic) -INDEX: Jenny Odell (Paris Review) -INDEX: Jenny Odell (Sierra) - - - -ESSAY: Reading the Rocks (Jenny Odell, March 21, 2024, Emergence) -REVIEW ESSAY: Why “The Living Mountain” Endures: Nan Shepard’s classic of nature writing and memoir is an education in how to reorient one’s attention to a landscape and its lifeforms, human and nonhuman. (Jenny Odell, March 13, 2025, The Nation) -REVIEW ESSAY: “Choose Hope or Despair”: On John Shoptaw (Jenny Odell, April 26, 2024, Paris Review) -ESSAY: The Myth of Self-Reliance: An encounter with Emerson’s essays. (Jenny Odell, January 15, 2020, Paris Review) -ESSAY: Why Does This Feel So Bad? (Jenny Odell, April 19, 2019, Paris Review) -ESSAY: 13 Ways of Looking:: On collage and the practice of searching, finding, and filing. (Jenny Odell, 09.21.23, Pioneer Works) -ESSAY: Dear future, here’s the one lesson I want to pass on to you: How to Do Nothing and Saving Time author Jenny Odell pens a personal letter to the future. (Jenny Odell, May 17, 2023, Sydney Morning Herald) -ESSAY: What Twitter Does to Our Sense of Time: (Jenny Odell, Dec. 8th, 2022, NY Times) -ESSAY: Why Birds Do What They Do: The more humans understand about their behavior, the more inaccessible their world seems. (Jenny Odell, June 2020, The Atlantic) -ESSAY: What Earthrise Can Tell Us About Earth Day: Earth Day should be a time for thinking about time (Jenny Odell, March 2, 2020, Sierra) -ESSAY: The Colonels: In praise of the ordinary night heron (Jenny Odell, June 9, 2018, Sierra) -ESSAY: The Secret Life of Calabazas Creek: A suburban mystery leads to Apple headquarters (Jenny Odell, April 17, 2019, Sierra) -ESSAY: The Magic of Swimming Holes (Angal Field, Jenny Odell and Eve Lyons, Aug. 17th, 2019, NY Times) -ESSAY: Excavating Calabazas Creek: An Inefficient Route Through Silicon Valley (Jenny Odell, Feb 20, 2019, Medium) -ESSAY: How to Internet: A guided tour through the past, present, and future of logging on (Jenny Odell, Dec 19, 2016, Human Parts) -TRANSCRIPT: how to do nothing: This is the transcript of a keynote talk I gave at EYEO 2017 in Minneapolis. An adapted ersion appears in my book, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy. (Jenny Odell, Jun 29, 2017, Medium) -ESSAY: Designing for the In-Between: Hybrids, 1990s net art, and a giant floating worm (Jenny Odell, Nov 2, 2018, Medium) -ESSAY: The Only Way to Resist the Attention Economy: Quitting Facebook isn’t the answer (Jenny Odell, Jun 19, 2019, Forge) -ESSAY: Homeland security: facial recognition in machines and crows (Jenny Odell, 1/’09/19, Open Space) -ESSAY: A non-native hill (Jenny Odell, 4/04/19, Open Space) -ESSAY: The Other Manila (Jenny Odell, 3/06/19, Open Space) -ESSAY: Whither tactical media? (Jenny Odell, 2/06/19, Open Space) -ESSAY: Notes of a Bioregional Interloper (Jenny Odell, 10/09/17, Open Space) -ESSAY: A Business With No End: Where does this strange empire start or stop? (Jenny Odell, November 27, 2018, NY Times) -ESSAY: On how to grow an idea: For TCI x Are.na's Library of Practical and Conceptual Resources, visual artist Jenny Odell muses over the concept of slow growth. (Jenny Odell, April 4, 2018, Creative Independent) -ESSAY: Living in the Archives (Jenny Odell, 9/06/18, Public Knowledge) -VIDEO LECTURE: How to Do Nothing (Eyeo 2017 - Jenny Odell) -ESSAY: I mined San Francisco’s trash for art (Jenny Odell, 12/02/15, Splinter) -ESSAY: Gift Thinking: The relationships, abundance, and reciprocity of nature’s economy (Robin Wall Kimmerer and Jenny Odell, November 19, 2024, Orion) -ESSAY: Sound: Birdsong (Jenny Odell, 12/02/19, The Believer) -EXCERPT: How to do Nothing (Jenny Odell) -EXCERPT: Introduction to How to do Nothing (Jenny Odell) -EXCERPT: from How to do Nothing (Jenny Odell) -ESSAY: “THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS A FREE WATCH” (Jenny Odell, 8.18.2017, SPECIAL INVESTIGATIVE REPORT FOR THE MUSEUM OF CAPITALISM) -ESSAY: how to do nothing (Jenny Odell, Jun 29, 2017, Medium) -DISCUSSION: Jenny Odell and Wendy Liu on Liberating Ourselves From Usefulness: "I don't always need a purpose for everything." (Jenny Odell, April 13, 2020, LitHub) -ESSAY: How to Unsettle People by Doing Nothing: Jenny Odell: In Celebration of a Small Rebellion (Jenny Odell, April 11, 2019, LitHub) - - -REVIEW: How Rebecca Solnit Found Her Voice: a review of RECOLLECTIONS OF MY NONEXISTENCE by Rebecca Solnit (Jenny Odell, 3/06/20, NY Times Book Review) - - - - -VIDEO: re:publica 2024: Jenny Odell - Beyond Repair (Re:publica, May 27, 2024) -VIDEO: Jenny Odell | Saving Time, Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock (The Long Now Foundation, Mar 7, 2023) -VIDEO: How to Do Nothing: Resisting The Attention Economy (Jenny Odell, Aug 8, 2019, Talks at Google) -VIDEO: Jenny Odell and Nathan Schneider Live in Poughkeepsie: On October 22, 2024, artist and author of Saving Time: How to Discover a Life Beyond the Clock and UC Boulder media studies professor Nathan Schneider joined Humanities New York in Poughkeepsie for a conversation on mindfulness and civic engagement in the current era. (Humanities NY) -VIDEO: Jenny Odell – How to do nothing | The Conference 2017 (The Conference / Media Evolution, Sep 11, 2017) - - - -PODCAST: Episode 151: Jenny Odell—How to Do Nothing (Brendan O’Meara, Creative Nonfiction Podcast) -PODCAST: A Podcast About Nothing with Jenny Odell: How to Do Nothing according to Jenny Odell (LARB Radio Hour, September 20, 2019) -PODCAST: Jenny Odell: Making Sense of Time (Elise Loehnen, Pulling the Thread) -PODCAST: Unplugging from the Attention Economy and Reclaiming Your Time with Jenny Odell (Episode 254 • 7th August 2024 • On Health for Women • Aviva Romm) -PODCAST: How to Do Nothing, With Artist and Educator Jenny Odell (Alice Bradley, August 5, 2019, Lifehacker: The Upgrade) -PODCAST: CM 155: Jenny Odell on How to Do Nothing (Curious Minds at Work, February 16, 2020) -PODCAST: S3 E5 Resisting the Attention Economy with Jenny Odell (Becoming the People Podcast with Prentis Hemphill, Finding Our Way) -PODCAST: Jenny Odell (Wild with Sarah Wilson, 6/25/24) -PODCAST: How To Do Everything with Jenny Odell (LAist) -PODCAST: Jenny Odell on the Relationship Between Time and Power: This Week on the Talk Easy Podcast with Sam Fragoso (Talk Easy, April 11, 2023) -PODCAST: Jenny Odell: There Is No Work Without Care and Maintenance: In Conversation with Roxanne Coady on Just the Right Book (Just the Right Book, September 3, 2020) -PODCAST: Jenny Odell: Our Vision of ‘Productivity’ is Way Too Narrow: The Author of How To Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy on Just the Right Book with Roxanne Coady (Just the Right Book , August 29, 2019) -PODCAST: 178: Book Club — 3 Big Ideas from SAVING TIME by Jenny Odell (Jenny Blake, Free Time) -PODCAST: 261 How to Stretch Time with Jenny Odell (We Can do Hard Things) - - - - -INTERVIEW: Another Kind of Time: An Interview with Jenny Odell: In this conversation, artist and writer Jenny Odell points beyond the domination of clock time toward ways of being that are more in tune with the rhythms and patterns of the Earth. (Emergence, April 25, 2023) -PROFILE: Jenny Odell Can Stretch Time and So Can You: A conversation with the writer and artist on her new book, collective burnout, and ways to live off the clock. (Camille Bromley, Mar 14, 2023, Wired) -PROFILE: Jenny Odell Wants You to Put Down Your Phone and Smell the Roses: The politics of refusal in the age of distraction (Nina Renata Aron, 9/23/19, California) -INTERVIEW: Artist Jenny Odell explains why place is the antidote to the attention economy: Odell’s book, How to Do Nothing, is actually about how to find the strength to do something (Angela Chen, Apr 22, 2019, the Verge) -INTERVIEW: How To Do Nothing’s Jenny Odell on balancing political burnout with engagement: As the 2020 presidential election approaches, the Oakland-based artist and writer explores ways to mindfully stay informed during the whiplash age of social media. (Steffanee Wang, 9/10/19, Fader) -PROFILE: Jenny Odell on why we need to learn to do nothing: ‘It's a reminder that you're alive’: The author and artist’s keynote address on our fractured attention spans went viral. Now she has a plan for how to heal them: lose ourselves in nature (Elle Hunt, 27 Sep 2019, The Guardian) -INTERVIEW: Stuck in the “Right Now”: A Conversation with Jenny Odell: The author of “How to Do Nothing” on the enforced stasis of COVID-19 lockdown. (Saam Niami, April 24, 2021, LA Review of Books) -INTERVIEW: How to Follow ‘Nothing’ (Jonty Cruz, Out of Print) -INTERVIEW: Jenny Odell Considers New Temporal Realities (Ross Simonini, January 19th, 2021, The Believer) -INTERVIEW: Jenny Odell Interviewed: The author on tracing the conceptual histories of time, labor, climate, and the nonhuman world. (Isabel Ling, August 3, 2023, BOMB) -INTERVIEW: On taking the time you need to notice, think, and grow: Writer, artist, and teacher Jenny Odell on giving yourself permission to stay quiet, what it feels like to become a bestselling author, and the mysterious cycles of the creative process. (From a conversation with Willa Köerner, DateMay 6, 2020, The Creative Independent) -TRANSCRIPT: “How to Save Time (by Doing Nothing)” (Episode #24 with Jenny Odell, October 25, 2023, Tricycle: Life as it is) -TRANSCRIPT: Jenny Odell’s new book ‘Saving Time’ gives fresh perspective on the meaning of time (PBS NewsHour, Apr 17, 2023) -TRANSCRIPT: How time came to rule our lives — and how we might free ourselves (Anne Strainchamps, To the Best of Our Knowledge) -INTERVIEW: Interview: Jenny Odell (pt. 1) (Lebron James, 10/12/2017) -INTERVIEW: What is time anyway? And Jealousy with Jenny Odell: The best selling author of How To Do Nothing gives us a history of time. (Carissa Potter, Jun 15, 2023, Bad at Keeping Secrets) -INTERVIEW: #rp24 speaker Jenny Odell: On practices of care and repair (re:publica 25) 17.01.2024 -INTERVIEW: There Is No Yesterday and No Tomorrow: Artist Jenny Odell on how paying attention can break us out of linear time (Jenny Odell in conversation with James Shaheen and Sharon Salzberg, Nov 06, 2023, Tricycle) -INTERVIEW: How to quit Facebook without quitting Facebook: Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing makes the case for keeping your Facebook account, staying on Twitter, checking your email, but doing it all differently, and “not as asked.” (And not as self-help.) (Kaitlyn Tiffany, Apr 9, 2019, Vox) -INTERVIEW: Jenny Odell Is Here to Liberate You From the Clock: The author of Saving Time explains how to combat the tyranny of time as we know it—and provides a little reassurance about the end of the world, too. (Jon Roth, Mar 7, 2023, Esquire) -INTERVIEW: Jenny Odell Welcomes the Spiral : The artist and author of a pandemic breakout about how to “resist the attention economy” returns with a book-length examination of the nature of time. “I remember being like, Why didn’t I write a book about, like, table tennis?” she says. “But then I was like, Well, you know, if I wrote a book about table tennis, somehow I would find a way to make table tennis be about the most pressing questions.” (Kenzie Bryant, March 8, 2023, Vanity Fair) -INTERVIEW: Carpe Diem: PW Talks with Jenny Odell (Tara Saunders, Dec 16, 2022, Publishers Weekly) -INTERVIEW: Jenny Odell on attention, where we put it, how it forms us and how it can polarise society: Jenny Odell on attention, where we put it, how it forms us and how it can polarise society (Elizabeth Oldfield speaks with artist, educator and author Jenny Odell 08/06/2022, Theos) -INTERVIEW: Jenny Odell is right on time: The bestselling author of How to Do Nothing returns with a brilliant, hopeful critique of our obsession with efficiency. (Interview by Celia Mattison, March 2023, Book Page) -INTERVIEW: Jenny Odell Doesn’t Want Your Hot Take (Taylor Moore, April 25, 2019, Chicago Review of Books) -INTERVIEW: Time Traveling With Author Jenny Odell (Mary Ann Gwinn, March 20, 2023, Kirkus) -INTERVIEW: This Is Not a Life Hack: Jenny Odell Discusses the Nature of Doing Nothing (Brady Brickner-Wood, Porterhouse Review) -INTERVIEW: A Conversation with Author Jenny Odell: Could “placefulness” cure our modern malaise? (Liv O’Keeffe, 10/29/19, California Native Plant Society) -TRANSCRIPT: Transcript: JENNY ODELL on Resisting the Attention Economy (For the Wild) -PROFILE: Jenny Odell wrote the book on doing nothing. Now her life is busier (Brandon Yu, November 29, 2019, Datebook) - - - -ESSAY: Making Space for Doing Nothing Helps My Artistic Practice: My creative time and attention are more than goods to be spent and saved (Nancy Reddy, 3/14/23, Electric Lit) - - -REVIEW ARCHIVE: Jenny Odell (Kirkus) - -REVIEW: of Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock, by Jenny Odell (Tatiana Schlossberg, NY Times Book Review) -REVIEW: of Saving Time (Sarah Jaffe, The Nation) -REVIEW: of Saving Time (Mary Retta, LA Review of Books) -REVIEW: of Saving Time (Rebecca Liu, The Guardian) -REVIEW: of Saving Time (Elizabeth A. Harris, NY Times Book Review) -REVIEW: On Saving Time as a New Mother: Rachel Ranie Taube Reads Jenny Odell: "Time becomes less an inevitable, external thing spread in front of you, and instead a thing you generate in concert." (Rachel Ranie Taube, March 7, 2023, LitHub) -REVIEW: of Saving Time (Kirkus) -REVIEW: of Saving Time (Publishers Weekly) -REVIEW: of Saving Time (Parul Seghal, The New Yorker) -REVIEW: of Saving Time (Megan Garber, The Atlantic) -REVIEW: of Saving Time (Good Reads) -REVIEW: of Saving Time (BookPage) -REVIEW: of Saving Time (Feminist Book Club) -REVIEW: of Saving Time (Kevin Brown, New Page) -REVIEW: of Saving Time (How to Be) -REVIEW: of Saving Time (Kristen Sieh, Audiofile) -REVIEW: of Saving Time (Kurt Johnson, Sydney Morning Herald) -REVIEW: of Saving Time (Publishers Weekly) -REVIEW: of Saving Time (BookMarks) -REVIEW: of Saving Time (Bekah Waalkes, Washington Post) -REVIEW: of Saving Time (Trish Talks Books) -REVIEW: of Saving Time (Joe Murray, Readings) -REVIEW: of Saving Time (Constance Grady, Vox) -REVIEW: of Saving Time (The Week) -REVIEW: of Saving Time (Jeremiah Brewster, The AU Review) -REVIEW: of Saving Time (Miyako Pleines, Spectrum Culture) -REVIEW: of Saving Time (Annalisa Quinn, Boston Globe) -REVIEW: of Saving Time (Jess Cotton, Jacobin) -REVIEW: of Saving Time (Jeannine Marie Pitas, Christian Century) -REVIEW: of Saving Time (Ava Recinos, Alta) -REVIEW: of Saving Time (Shelf Awareness) -REVIEW: of Saving Time (Charles Foster, TLS) -REVIEW: of How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell (Akiva Gottlieb, LA Times) -REVIEW: of How to Do Nothing (Jonah Engel Bromwich|, NY Times Book Review) -REVIEW: of How to Do Nothing (Kaitlyn Tiffany, Vox) -REVIEW: of How to do Nothing (Minda Honey, Work in Progress)) -REVIEW: of How to do Nothing (Summer Moore Batte, Stanford magazine) -REVIEW: of How to do Nothing (Ellie Shechet, The Guardian) -REVIEW: of How to do Nothing (Sam Still Reading) -REVIEW: of How to do Nothing (Meaghan O'Connell, The Cut) -REVIEW: of How to do Nothing (Garth Nichols) -REVIEW: of How to do Nothing (Nomad of the Universe) -REVIEW: of How to do Nothing (Brendan Dawes) -REVIEW: of How to do Nothing (Alden Bradford) -REVIEW: of How to do Nothing (Scott Neigh) -REVIEW: of How to do Nothing (Introverted Reader) -REVIEW: of How to do Nothing (Content Catnip) -REVIEW: of How to do Nothing (Whymog -REVIEW: of How to do Nothing (Garrett James, Medium) -REVIEW: of How to do Nothing (Christine Sweeney, LSA Blog) -REVIEW: of How to do Nothing (Brady Brickner-Wood, Porterhouse Review) -REVIEW: of How to do Nothing (Jason Lloyd, Issues in Science and Technology) -REVIEW: of How to do Nothing (Readasaurus Reviews) -REVIEW: of How to do Nothing (Nicolo Froio, New Socialist) -REVIEW: of How to do Nothing (CannonballRead) -REVIEW: of How to do Nothing (Katie Bloom, Seattle Times) -REVIEW: of How to do Nothing (Users York) -REVIEW: of How to do Nothing (Ava’s Adventures Through Reading) -REVIEW: of How to do Nothing (Naomi Corlette, Harvard Political Review) -REVIEW: of How to do Nothing (Pumpjack Press) -REVIEW: of How to do Nothing (Astute) -REVIEW: of How to do Nothing (Nate Shivar) -REVIEW: of How to do Nothing (Jordan Max Cooperman) -REVIEW: of How to do Nothing (Justin Laidlaw, Buddy Ruski) -REVIEW: of How to do Nothing (Karen Kao, Shanghai Noir) -REVIEW: of How to do Nothing (Captain Fez) -REVIEW: of How to do Nothing (Adam Blackwell, Field Notes) -REVIEW: of How to do Nothing (Shannan L Hayes, Journal of Visual Culture) -REVIEW: of How to do Nothing (Cory Doctorow, boing boing) -REVIEW: of How to do Nothing (Melissa Darcey, epiphany) -REVIEW: of How to do Nothing (Kill Your Darlings) -REVIEW: of How to do Nothing (Nicholas Cannariato, Washington Post) -REVIEW: of How to do Nothing (The Yes List) -REVIEW: of How to do Nothing (VK reads) -REVIEW: of How to do Nothing (Meg Vlaun, Making Words) -REVIEW: of How to do Nothing (Siobhan Harvey, Stuff) -REVIEW: of How to do Nothing (Paige Lorenze, Medium) -REVIEW: of How to do Nothing (Kyle Maslen, The Adelaide Review) -REVIEW: of How to do Nothing (Eustea Reads) -REVIEW: of How to do Nothing (Marie Solis, Vice) -REVIEW: of How to do Nothing (Jocelyn K. 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