Category Archives: Writing

This past year was a doozy by most measures, but it also held the greatest volume of attentive human minutes. Attentive human minutes (AHMs) are sixty second spans where the individual attention is captivated and an awareness of the passing of time manifests. Known commonly as boredom or meditation, AHMs cause significant discomfort before turning over into something evidently valuable in the moment (as in the first run of spring, when the lungs need more than just a dusting off). Long stretches of AHMs can have significant spooky impacts: from questioning the value of everything to feeling peace to the sense of dread that comes from remembering mortality. Not since news television started broadcasting car chases live has time slowed down so significantly for so many. This isn’t to diminish the speeding up that those in nursing and courier delivery experienced; nor the lost time from doomscrolling that anyone who feared cytokine storms or Q Anon experienced. But it is to recognize the degree to which the reduction of active social life lent itself to human boredom. Ninety percent of the sourdough starter neophytes would have been far more distracted at a bar (that lucky ten percent disappeared into the bread in a way we should all envy). So here’s to the time many of us gained, to the year of extra minutes some of us just survived. Next year may we choose to pay attention and acquire boredom of our own willing, rather than at the behest of a terrible crisis.