How to Turn Attention Into Creation
Tending to the garden of the self.
Before you dig in—if you haven’t yet—I highly recommend you go ahead and read Cultivating The Garden of the Self so you understand the how behind the what:
Cultivating the Garden of the Self
This project is the essence of Instead of Doomscrolling, and by default, of my self-creation.
have fun exploring the footnotes and watching the videos!
We talk plenty about the consumption-to-creation pipeline; however, I find this thread finitely reductive. I thoroughly believe it cannot encapsulate the infinite magnitude of creative emergence.
As William James famously said: “My experience is what I agree to attend to.”
this sounds great in theory, but it got me thinking: what does it actually look like in practice?
In the quest to decipher how attention turns into creation, I crafted a self-mythology that became much larger than me as I kept developing it. Though a very ambitious task, I believe I was able to map out what this means for me and what it could mean to you. The duality of this piece you’re reading is meant to showcase both the theory and the practice—a behind-the-scenes look into the most important work I’ve ever put together—through fragments of my lived experiences and, of course, my second brain: Sublime.
A huge thank you to Sublime for partnering up with me on such a special journey, for becoming an essential part of my creative living, and for making this installment of Beyond the Algorithm free to all!
And an extra special thank you to Sari Azout for being there for me throughout the hardships I’ve experienced over the last few months, and for all the conversations that have been part of the fuel getting me through them <3
It took me six months to put together Cultivating The Garden of the Self—it also took me twenty-three years.
Throughout my life, I have always been looking for a sense of belonging, the feeling of connection, in a search for home. I always knew there was something different about me that made me feel trapped and isolated in an invisible box1. I jumped from friendship to friendship, from city to city, and from mask to mask—no matter how much I ran, I could never find what I wanted—I just felt displaced.
I was looking for something that was always there; I just wasn’t paying enough attention. I couldn’t sit still long enough to notice that connection was all around me, that there was as much grief as there was joy2. I didn’t care to stop and let myself exist in the latter, to observe within as much as outside of myself.
I may have felt disconnected from other people, but in the midst of this, I found so many meaningful connections with nature, TV shows, books, art, experiences, films, music, knowledge, poetry, animals, and much more—all of it a direct reflection of the building blocks of my identity, and hence, of the world as a whole. It stared back at me through every drawing, journal entry, analysis, and conversation I got to share about them.
Many of these seeds were planted without me noticing, but once I began attending to the most important ones3 and noticing the patterns that emerged, I came to the realization that the only way to find a sense of belonging is by simply being.
Home is not found, it’s made. The creative act is the ongoing process of self-making by being in the world—moving through its spiraling, cyclical nature. I see us as fragments of a universal mirror that reflects our unique human experience, taking shape through every emergent element that makes up the biosphere of the garden of ourselves.
again, this sounds beautiful and poetic…but what the hell does this reflection look like irl?
COLLECTION AND RECOLLECTION
The act of attending inherently requires a system of documentation and recollection. For a long time, I left it up to my memory—which was not only deeply inefficient because I have the worst long-term memory, but our minds happen to be unreliable narrators. I then jumped from system to system, only staying with them as long as they took me to assemble—notes app, journals, pictures, bookmarks, social media folders—but no matter what I did, all of these things that I noticed and documented were scattered all over both my physical and digital spaces. It was like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle whose pieces were scattered all over a city; nearly impossible.
I also happen to have some issues with object permanence, so unless I see something, I forget it exists. So when a subscriber introduced Sublime to me, my entire creative process finally began taking shape, blossoming into its full potential.
sooooo what is Sublime? you may be wondering
To me, it is the headquarters of my self-creation. It’s the home for all of the moments that have sparked my sense of wonder, allowing it to incubate, grow, and evolve into the sublimity4 of creation.
Practically, this means every card I share below is one of the seeds that grew into this self-mythology and eventual essay—quotes, images, highlights, podcasts, PDFs, TikToks, notes—the sky is the limit, everything lives here. Not only can you save, but you can also discover related cards, search pieces for your existing ideas, explore other people’s libraries, and create collections. My favorite feature, though, is the canvas because—as you’ll see—that’s where we get to actually piece the puzzle together.
Here’s a brief (ended up being not so brief lmao but it’s worth it trustttt) walkthrough of how I use Sublime—and how you can too—, my library, the collection for The Garden of the Self, and an introduction to the canvas that made all of it happen:
As an IOD reader, you can get 20% off any paid Sublime plan6 by using the code INSTEADOFDOOMSCROLLING
:)
CATHARSIS
noun ca·thar·sis kə-ˈthär-səs
: purification or purgation of the emotions (such as pity and fear) primarily through art
: a purification or purgation that brings about spiritual renewal or release from tension
: elimination of a complex by bringing it to consciousness and affording it expression
attention → collection → cultivation → creation → EXPRESSION/CATHARSIS
Throughout this process I have changed my perspective surrounding what it means to ‘create’. Here’s a note I recently wrote about this:
I was traveling back home in the middle of my last semester—after having been back to uni for just a week—I was too sick to take care of myself, and my health just kept declining. I was so frustrated because I couldn’t understand why I felt like my body was giving out, and that no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t fix it on my own.
This resulted in a completely sleepless, shame-fueled, sickening daze during my journey back. I could visualize the thick sense of failure seeping into every single nerve in my body because I was the one who always figured it out, I was the one everyone could rely on, I was the one to bear the room’s discomfort, always agreeable at the expense of myself.
The second I hopped on the red-eye from Madrid to Bogotá, I felt tears burning down my clammy cheeks; there’s something about airplanes that makes me unravel. I had been awake for around 40 hours at this point, unable to eat, barely able to walk, and even though I knew I should have tried to rest, I got my journal out and started channeling every single ounce of pent-up energy I still had onto the pages. I remember writing something about feeling like an exposed nerve—which now that I have a diagnosis, I wasn’t too far off—but words weren’t cutting it like they normally do.
I used to draw a lot when I was younger, but my perfectionism always turned into something ugly, not the art—my work was gorgeous—but myself. I felt just as ugly at that moment 40,000 feet in the air, but I couldn’t ignore it anymore, I had to finally purge it out. I drew myself, every trace threatening to break through the paper, and feeling out of control, I realized that’s exactly what I had to let go of. I think my self-portrait turned out to be equally ugly as it is beautiful because it was not trying to be perfect for once.
i feel for the poor old guy that was sitting next to me while i was going through it oops
Below, I share a little bit of the BTS on each section of The Garden of the Self: both via video walkthroughs of its canvas, and the stories behind some of the most important cards that live there.
BIRTH
Adventure Time has been an essential part of my life ever since I can remember. I was around seven years old when the show first aired—sixteen years ago. I vividly remember watching this episode and having an eight-life crisis; this very question sent me spiraling. My poor, young, existential brain held onto this question for years and years, incubating7 it until I got the tools I needed to attempt to answer it for the first time for a high school philosophy assignment. I bounced between Plato, Wittgenstein, Aristotle, Bechtel, and Nietzsche, trying to figure out: what was the point of all of this? Does a separation between the soul and the body even exist?
Looking back at my assignment8, I tried my best, but I didn’t even get close to figuring it out. I just ended up siding with Plato for the sake of handing something in.
While rewatching the episode recently, though, I realized that the answer was there all along; I just hadn’t paid enough attention. We go through the cycle of birth, death, and the disappointment in between, as observed from Finn’s POV during an astral projection. Glob—a sort of god—gives Finn the answer neither of us caught the first time: it’s not enough to have created something amazing. He flies into a comet threatening everything he built and dies for it—all from a place of devotion.
Birth is not finite; it’s ongoing, and that is the greatest act of creation. But to close the loop of the life cycle, something has to die in order to be born again. Glob is dead, but we—at least for now—are capable of rebirth, rerooting, and reseeding.
FERTILE GROUND/EGO
I wrote the following reflection on discomfort a while back on one of my earliest media roundups about the day I made this little guy :)
One of the quotes I do my best to live by is “We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.” by Kurt Vonnegut. I actually heard this quote for the first time during a talk I attended to where the author Colum McCann spoke about the importance of telling stories. Funnily enough, I was so scared to go because I had never attended anything like this outside of an academic context, that would meant that I would have to go by myself to the other end of the city, in the middle of winter, to a place I’d never been to before—all very uncomfortable things to me.
The talk took place at the Cenacolo of the Santa Croce church here in Florence, so from the get-go, I was surrounded by a wealth of history and beauty, with frescoes painted on every wall. It felt as if I was the only young foreign person there, I was surrounded by older Italian people so it’s safe to say I was completely outside of my comfort zone. As the talk went by, I took notes on my recently purchased leather-bound journal and I felt this immense surge of inspiration. Other than the previous quote, the idea that impacted me the most was that turbulence is where the poetry lies9. Those words were the ones that finally pushed me to start posting on social media, which ultimately, led me to build this incredible community.
I didn’t have a clue about what I was doing so I was absolutely terrified, but I knew I had something to say, regardless of whether I was going to be heard or not. As a chronic perfectionist and maladaptive daydreamer, it has been so challenging to actually execute my ideas, especially because I’m figuring it out as I go. However, being able to endure discomfort—and a lot more than I would care to admit—has been the very thing that has fundamentally redirected the course of my life into the path toward actually accomplishing my dreams.
The more I look back on this day, the more I realize how much it changed my life. I bought my new journal from this little artisan shop in Florence to not only be able to take notes, but to signify a new chapter of my life that felt worth documenting for once. Before I left for the talk, I wrote my first entry which concluded with the following sentence:
I really do hope I look back at these pages in a few years and see a turning point looking back at me.
Little did she know…
SEEDS/CURIOSITY
I remember listening to this on a flight—which as we’ve previously established, does something to my brain chemistry—and feeling like the person that got on that airplane was not the same one that got off.
Here’s the little reflection I wrote on the media roundup where I shared this podcast episode with you <3
Every single time I listen to an episode of On Being, I know something inside me will shift, this movement allowing for something to finally fall into place. This time around, though, I’d say that this wasn’t just a shift, but rather a whole earthquake. As I began exploring the ground from which I gathered all of my inspiration and resources in this journey, I inevitably came across Maria Popova.
While I was listening to this conversation, I couldn’t help but feel like so many of the unspoken drivers of my devotion toward life and the work I love sharing with you on here were being put into words. It can feel somewhat reductive when I try to explain what this publication is about, because yes, it’s about engaging with media and the digital world more mindfully, but at its core, this project is—in Popovas’ words—how, through these methods, we can build an intellectual life for spiritual survival.
EMERGENCE/ATTENTION
Reclaiming my attention was the seed that emerged into what my life looks like right now. As I was trying to understand how to even do this, I inevitably encountered Weil’s work. She immediately became one of my favorite philosophers because of her sheer devotion to embodying her work, rather than just writing about it. She also reminded me why I had fallen in love with philosophy in the first place. Her work genuinely changed how interact with the world.
Here is a reflection on her work which I wrote on a deep dive on attention, which to this day, remains one of the pieces I’m proudest of.
I could not do research on attention without including the great Simone Weil. Though her perspective is much more spiritual, I will preface this by saying that her understanding of God is not necessarily rooted in institutionalized religion or a personal intervening deity, but rather understood as the selfless experience of a universal principle of justice, beauty, and order.
For Weil, attention is not merely a cognitive skill but the substance of prayer and the root of morality. Her definition of prayer consists of the orientation of the entirety of our attention toward God. She argues that true attention is a negative effort that consists in suspending thought, leaving it detached and empty to be able to receive the object at hand. This attention destroys evil in ourselves and brings light into the soul, which can make us better able to help someone in distress. For her, attention is the highest virtue, directly linking academic work to sanctity and providing the only power for preparing the soul for spiritual life.
My biggest takeaway here is this idea of negative effort, in which the space that we have been talking about fundamentally exists. Approaching life with selfless openness dissipates predispositions rooted in rigid and constrictive patterns that have been built over time. Being able to release ourselves from this is so important to create the space needed for meaningful growth and a meaningful life.
LABYRINTH/POIESIS
This deck was one of my first encounters with tarot. It’s rooted in archetypes from the artist’s personal life instead of the traditional arcana, and I immediately connected with it. This was way back when I was still in high school, and of course, I was going through it—I was profoundly caved into myself emotionally, physically, and spiritually.
This card was one of the first ones I pulled when I began to try to do a reading for myself. The deck comes with this tiny booklet that is just bursting with wisdom, so when I read the description of the card, something clicked. It was structured unlike anything I’d read up to that point in my, admittedly, poorly intellectual life. Through it, I realized I had found the word that I was missing to understand my calling in life. I am forever grateful I had the privilege of crossing paths with it. I’ll translate the first page of its description, and maybe you’ll find it as meaningful as I did and still do!
77. Poiesis
▲Creation. Inspiration. Amazement. Intuition. Poetry. Metaphor. Truth. To do. Cause. Seed. Talent.
▲The work acquires a life of its own. The dream comes true. Materialize thoughts. Name things. Devote yourself to your vocation. Crossing the great waters. Condition favors understanding. I jump into the void. Paradigm shift. Acquire freedom. Create your own myth. Advance into the unknown. Take risks.
“Man is a being who has to bear witness to what he is.”
—Martin Heidegger
“The poet indifferently transforms defeat into victory, victory into defeat, a prenatal emperor anxious only for the gathering of the azure.”
—René Char
Borges is one of the most impactful authors I’ve ever read; there’s no one like him. The first time I encountered his work, I read The Aleph for because it was lying around, neglected after the many years I was supposed to read it for school—which I never did10. I was so out of my depth when I read it a while back, but I knew it was something special. Last year, I read Labyrinths, and with my growth as a reader and as a person, thankfully, I was able to interact with it on a much deeper level. He has irrevocably expanded my understanding of reality—and this story in particular has been my companion ever since.
Here’s the mini review I wrote while I was reading it for the first time:
You know when you’re reading a book and you start to come to the realization that it will fundamentally change your life? That’s exactly how I’ve felt making my way through these stories—so much so that I haven’t been able to bring myself to finish it yet, just to savor it a little longer. It’s hard to describe the essence of Borges’s universe; it is a wonderfully surreal space in which logic wavers and reality bends in every possible direction. The most intriguing and captivating thing about these stories is that they often read like nonfiction, which weirdly sets them in a parallel universe to ours. This perspective has led me to question so many aspects of my reality—and the fact that creating it is often up to us.
ENTROPY/LIMINALITY
This was one of the first entries I wrote in my previously mentioned journal. For once, I was allowing myself to not just be curious about something, but genuinely develop and deepen my relationship with it beyond a passing thought. Reading it back, I’m pretty sure this was the entire conceptual genesis of the garden of the self.
I wrote it after a train ride on my way to Napoli12(i’m noticing that vehicles of transportation, not just airplanes, are an emotional trigger for me lol), and even though the trip lasted only a few days, it was the most transformational one I’ve ever been on.
I made a point to write as much as I wanted to, free of any pressure—allowing myself to bring the connections I made in the world to light, instead of keeping them tucked away in some dark corner in my head. I genuinely don’t know where my life would be if I hadn’t gone through this experience.
Here’s the transcript of the first few of pages from the entry:
03/02/25
I really love trains, the idea of not having any responsibilities or control during this transitory moment brings me great comfort. Existing within movement with no ulterior motives in collectiveness is such a joyous experience. I always try to sleep in trains but I never can. There is just something so deeply stimulating about being able to let go and see yourself across places, embarking on a journey, filled with uncertainty. Trains really get me thinking. On the train to Naples I was indulging in all of the feelings I just described, which got me thinking about trains as a liminal space, which naturally spiraled into really pushing the definition of liminality to its very edge. Here is the official definition:
“LIMINALITY IS A QUALITY OF BEING IN BETWEEN TWO PLACES OR STAGES, ON THE VERGE OF TRANSITIONING TO SOMETHING NEW”
My first introduction to liminal spaces were those creepy images of empty houses and abandoned malls, frozen hallways and children’s rooms. Compilations in slideshows with eerie background music seemed to elicit such a visceral response in the collective, coming from deep within, an almost instinctual response, bypassing reason and consciousness.
For me personally, I felt a sense of deep comfort, just like when I’m on a train, it seemed like a state of existence which surpassed time and space, existing as its own independent entity. I do understand, however, how these places incite fear and disorientation. I have experienced these feelings for far too long and far too vividly which has probably created a certain sense of familiarity and comfort. It used to be extremely jarring to live in such a state, now I understand this is the key to navigating the human experience. The uncertainty of liminality is the spark of imagination. There is far too much to unpack here so I’ll just share a few of the liminal spaces I have been thinking of, mind you, plenty of them might not necessarily be the most obvious ones but they will certainly plant a seed, especially once you13 revisit the definition.
Concrete stairs
Coffins
Childhood
Trains
Reading
Porcelain crack
Elevator
Downward dog
Dollhouse in my school
Churches
Tunnels
Water
Airports (past security)
The ocean
Grandma’s old house
A bruise
A door
An oven
A fleeting scent
Gushing blood
A ringing phone
Fog
Religion
Church bells
A cast
The internet
A crush
My body
A picture
A cloud
Cabinets
Pots for plants
Dreams
Sand
WHITE HOLES/HOME
My second favorite show of all time—obviously after Adventure Time—is The OA. Here’s a note I shared this morning about it; prompted by revisiting this reflection. I genuinely believe I went through a kind of awakening after finishing this show:
i literally felt like the meme included in the note
I remember feeling like I was getting some sort of download—a calling to express myself—which made me realize that I found purpose through writing. I’ve now come to understand this as the state I find myself in when my mind and my body are in alignment to express something that exceeds them both. Though it’s not always easy to get there, that’s exactly how actually actually writing the piece on The Garden of the Self came to be.
In my rush to write my realizations and theories down before they slipped my mind, I grabbed the first surface I could write on—which turned out to be a random cardboard folder—I tore it into it and began writing. Ever since, it has been a permanent fixture in different parts of my room, changing places every time I feel like I need to rearrange my space to fit my growing self.
In the latest rearrangement, I found the piece of cardboard tucked away in a cabinet for some reason—moving away had meant that little things changed while I was gone14. Thankfully though, it allowed me to discover it again, and with years gone by, I developed a newfound meaning; it was the very last missing puzzle piece to be able to finish the framework. It allowed me to answer my question of home. I now have it out on display again15: a reminder of how far I’ve come.
Thank you again to Sublime for being part of my journey, and I hope you get to enjoy it as much as I do!
Don’t forget that you can get 20% off any paid Sublime plan by using the code INSTEADOFDOOMSCROLLING
END NOTES <3
did i go outside just to take this picture with the moon? yes. did i also have to ask my mom to help me take the screenshot? also yes. it was so worth it. either way, i’ve said a lot already, you saw what this piece and this process has meant to me so i’ll keep this brief. finishing this project and being able to essentially share how my brain works has been a pleasure. i worked through this entire project during the hardest chapter of my life and finally sharing it with you is the best way i could think of closing it. i know there are good things coming as i start a new chapter, things are starting to feel lighter for once. i’m healing, much of which i accredit to you. excited to keep growing the garden.
thank you for your attention,
I hadn’t noticed the parallels between tend and attend until I was writing this so I thought to look up their etymology—what a wonderful parallel to the core of this piece :)
“Tend(v.1) early 14c., tenden, “turn the mind or attention to, be intent upon;” late 14c., “spread, stretch, extend;” also “move or direct oneself in a certain direction;” from Old French tendre “stretch out, hold forth, hand over, offer” (11c.), from Latin tendere “to stretch, extend, make tense; aim, direct; direct oneself, hold a course” (see tenet). (…)”
“Attend c. 1300, "be subject to" (obsolete); early 14c., "direct one's mind or energies" (archaic), from Old French atendre "to expect, wait for, pay attention" (12c., Modern French attendre) and directly from Latin attendere "give heed to," literally "to stretch toward," from ad "to, toward" (see ad-) + tendere "stretch" (from PIE root *ten- "to stretch"). The notion is of "stretching" one's mind toward something.”
take a shot every time i say that i’m trying not to run too long while indeed running too long lol but genuinely this was the shortest i could make it. i got to show you everything i wanted so #noragrets.
I find it to be true when people say ideas have an expiration date, however, we seem to forget that they also need to go through an incubation stage.
reading this back makes me think maybe this is why i get these epiphanies on airplanes
i don’t think i ever read a full book in school. i literally couldn’t do it and i just thought i was too stupid (i wish i could go back in time and tell her that the stupid thing is her believing that) so at one point I stopped trying. turns out undiagnosed and untreated audhd can do that to you. once i realized i loved writing i forced myself to learn how to read books via unconventional methods because i REALLY wanted to be a reader. i want to talk about this more in depth some other time, but this is to say it’s never too late to start!!!
try not to fall into autism stereotypes - level: impossible
moving back home has been really challenging, and during the process of acceptance of the reality of it while i was still in Italy, the song Everything Stays from Adventure Time (ofc) by Rebecca Sugar was on replay. it helped me make peace and accepting this change. i hold it near and dear to my heart <3 this little moment of finding my reflection tucked away in my childhood room reminded me of it.
the passage about trains is so thoughtful, i feel the exact same way. in general, it’s nice to give up control every once in a while and take stock of where you are.
i have a tendency to keep moving regardless of whether it’s good for me or not: i pace around my house when i’m bored, i bounce my leg at the dinner table, and i zone out when others speak to me because my brain is on go-mode all the time.
these habits are useful sometimes for keeping my mind occupied, but lately i’ve been trying to focus more on just sitting with my senses and letting the liminality of my spirit be a comfortable place instead of something i must avoid at all costs.
wonderful article 🩶
Mapu wow this is gorgeous! So much incredible work