work and "work": a case for doing nothing

Woven: Reflections on the Wonderfully Weird Web, Part 5

Hello gentle-people,

This last week was busier than usual. But somehow, amid the busyness, these words poured out of me after the theme had been sitting with me for weeks. I love how it all came together. It may be my favorite in this series so far.

Content warning: Though I am a little vague on the details, this post does mention surgery and racial trauma.

[Woven: Reflections on the Wonderfully Weird Web is a series that weaves together stories of how I have been shaped by the internet. This series comes with reflective questions to help us think critically about our engagement with digital media and develop better practices of care for ourselves and others we are in community with online. You can explore more in this series here.]

thumb wars

There was something growing in me that recently had to be surgically removed.¹ In light of that experience, I have been thinking about growth—the things we want to grow and the things we wish would stop. I’ve been thinking about how natural things grow versus how unnatural things grow.

Social media is a very unnatural thing, preying on natural impulses. Crafting a post can feel like planting a seed, and each like or comment can feel like a root. But what is the fruit? I can’t say it’s all bad, but I know some of it is strange.

It was strange to have your follower count on Instagram grow because a Black man’s life was taken from him by a cop pressing a knee down on his neck. I am speaking, of course, of George Floyd. Say his name.

It was strange to have a hundred new friend requests on Facebook from people who came to “listen and learn” after a Black woman’s life was taken away by cops shooting up her home while she was asleep. I am speaking, of course, of Breonna Taylor. Say her name.

It was strange to take part in IG lives discussing the roots of racial injustice in the U.S., weaving in my vulnerable story as a Haitian woman living in the US to an audience I could not make eye contact with. It was strange to feel like we had to ride that wave while it lasted, educating as many as possible while keeping ourselves alive.

For most of 2020 and part of 2021, I lived as if my vocation was to speak to an audience of people I was trying to convince that my life mattered. It was the burnout that taught me otherwise. But before the burnout, I had my world of tiny squares to manage. I had to grow them. So I wrote poems and lament prayers. I shared videos and reposted anything I thought was emotionally or intellectually stirring. I used Canva like it was a lifeline, crafting pretty little squares with mini sermons for the movement. My thumbs were working hard, but growth felt like a cruel game.

Around that time, I remember an IG live where

Austin Channing Brown

talked about her book, I’m Still Here, becoming a bestseller. Growth led to her being able to buy a house for her family. She lamented the reason why this was possible. It was hard for us to embrace growth when we knew a truth laced with Black grief.

do nothing

The farmer-philosopher Masanobu Fukuoka popularized the concept of “do-nothing farming,” which is an approach to agriculture that operates in contrast to industrial farming, honoring the rhythms of nature. Gaining inspiration from a vacant lot, Fukuoka embraced the presence of tall grasses and weeds, scattering seeds and allowing the land to do what it does naturally. I came across this farming technique in a book called How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell. Odell goes on to describe how Fukouka approached farming in a way that was a removal of design, a way that contrasted the highly cultivated techniques of industrial farming, with its artificial fertilizers and strict timelines.

What is interesting about Fukuoka’s technique is that it is not one of negligence. Fukuoka’s technique was developed over decades. Yes, the seeds were scattered rather than planted in rows, but he was paying close attention. In his admission that “humanity knows nothing at all,”² Fukuoka yields to nature in a way that those who sought to conquer lands through manifest destiny could not.

Odell offers her concept of manifest dismantling, which challenges endless expansion and perpetual production. In the same way that do-nothing farming honors “the natural intelligence at work in the land,” manifest dismantling seeks to make space so that something more sustainable and humane can have its way. It is honest about not being able to control everything. Fukuoka’s do-nothing farming is a technique that thrives through deep trust in the land. Manifest dismantling also takes trust. And we will need a lot of it to surrender control, embrace undoing, and scatter the seeds of something new.

Every feather softens the fall. Consider supporting my gentle landing dreams through a one-time donation.

work and “work”

Maybe you haven’t noticed, but I intentionally never talk about my main job in this space. While this is partly a decision I made to honor my privacy, it is also a decision I made to honor definitions of vocation I prefer to live into that look at the whole of your life versus just your occupation. Learning these definitions of vocation helped me get off a life-denying path and onto a life-affirming one. But I learned it all with my head before I learned with my body. My body was—is—still catching up.

While I was learning it all in my head, I started a podcast called “Dear Soft Black Woman (DSBW).” I went into it with small confidence, armed with affirmations I was writing on Twitter and IG that replaced the content I was planting before. This new crop felt promising and fresh. I could feel my voice getting clearer the more episodes I recorded and the more I wrote. But between the break that was the end of season one and the beginning of season two, something went wrong.

I was paying attention—very closely—to how DSBW was growing. Her slow and steady growth didn’t bother me while I was in school. But when I graduated from my first master’s program with no employment prospects, I blamed the podcast for two reasons:

1) It didn’t grow fast enough to offer me financial support during my underemployment, and

2) I thought it gave the appearance that I was doing better than I was.³ Funny. I made a podcast where I talked about how Black women are so often viewed as strong, independent, and in need of no help only to be interpreted as such because I had a podcast.

I had produced so much content. I had so many markers of growth:

• I got to interview some of my heroes, women I had looked up to well before I could see myself as a theologian.

• I had a New York Times Bestselling author on as a guest.

• I had several Black women tell me it was saving their lives.

• I got to be interviewed at a conference by the author whose definition of vocation started my journey. Talk about a full circle moment.

After graduating, I went into the summer of 2022 with a deep depression. I started to feel like I had nothing more to say in that format. I lost confidence in my voice and struggled to edit my recordings. I didn’t want to hear myself talk, and I couldn’t absorb the affirmations of others who said they wanted more.

Like I said, my body was still catching up. I took a deep dive into educating online, yet again, from a place of deep vulnerability. My work was once again highly cultivated. Looking back, I could see how rigid I was, how particular. I would also get this weird sinking feeling when I thought about how much of “me” was out there. I felt like an imposter in so many ways.

When you do any kind of work online, you have to face the reality that some people will never take you seriously. You may go around thinking you have to qualify everything you do online by putting it in parentheses because it’s not real. When I went to school, I had colleagues, and online, I have “colleagues.” I wasn’t creating in brick-and-mortar spaces, I was creating in “spaces.” So what I did wasn’t work; it was “work.” So for some, I wasn’t tired; I was “tired.”

And when I say I dismantled one trap for myself and set another, some might scratch their heads at the idea that anyone could feel trapped online.

But my body was catching up, and it was telling me it was all real.

This was really work, no parentheses. It was really work and my heart was broken.

Check out the Bookshop list for this series!

a case for doing nothing

I recently had dinner with a friend who described A Gentle Landing as an oasis. In our conversation, we also talked about how Substack, in a sea of social media platforms, can also feel like an oasis. I certainly felt that way when I joined in 2022.⁴ There is something so beautiful happening here and very often people who migrate over and leave other social media platforms behind (or let them lay fallow) call themselves “refugees”—may the parentheses hold.

But Substack is not immune to the patterns of growth other social media platforms have taken. More often then not, social media platforms begin with a very simple promise. With Facebook, it was to connect friends. With Instagram, it was to share wholesome photos. These simple promises get replaced by more complicated ideals. Their values slip, as the draw towards making more money leads to more decisions that betray their users' autonomy.⁵

But, as users, we are not off the hook completely. We are not immune to our patterns of chasing growth on Substack like we were on other platforms. I know I have had to reckon with myself and this series is just one of the ways I am doing that. As I learn with my mind, I am leaning into new embodied⁶ practices for resisting the attention economy. And I want A Gentle Landing to embrace a method of growth that looks more like do-nothing farming and Jenny Odell’s ideas on doing nothing as an act of refusal to the attention economy:

• I want to resist the pull of overproduction and urgency that often comes with monetization. I believe in taking writing breaks. When people join as paid subscribers, they pay for the archive. All new posts are free.⁷

• I have let the chat lay fallow because I want to honor our attention. So, I plan to use it only for the most urgent matters. Thus far, nothing has merited the distraction for me.

• I do not write hoping to go viral. I write for my people—the gentle-people. Those two things stand in contrast to me because of what is so often lost with context collapse. But when you write for your people, you have a context.⁸

• I write with the assumption that my people can engage deeply. I hope that you will. I know that life often does not afford us many moments to luxuriate in the reflection questions, but I leave them there, like a chair, waiting to be sunk into the moment you find the time.⁹

• I don’t ask for much from you in response. But I do often leave you with questions to ask yourself. It is an honor when you choose to linger here and share your reflections. My favorite aspect of Odell’s do nothing approach is practicing presence. Whenever this happens, for a brief moment, each time, I believe it is possible for us to be present to one another for real.

I got to see a picture of the thing that was taken out of me. Not only did I see it, I took a picture of it and sent it to my best friends. They marveled at its size, as I did when I first saw it. The funny thing is it did not cause me any noticeable pain or discomfort, but as one of my friends said, it was “living rent-free” in my body. It was producing nothing yet siphoning unknown stores of energy from me.

It was a tough decision to have it removed when I did. I was told I might have started to feel some discomfort from it if I had waited. I was told that if it continued to grow, it would lead to a bigger surgery with a longer recovery time. It was so hard saying yes to a surgery to remove something I couldn’t discernibly feel any negative effects from.

But I said yes to elective surgery. I had so many fears to face during the whole process, but I did it. Another friend said, “You did it, it’s done, and now you have a cool scar.” I learned that I am stronger than I previously knew I was. I learned that I want to make the most of my life when I am not in pain. But I also learned that when I am in pain, I am not devoid of life—I am often merely squinting through it.

I have been asked if I notice any changes since the thing has been removed. Not much stands out to me physically, though I do feel a little lighter. I have learned a bit about manifest dismantling through my body in this experience of subtraction. Something was taken out of me, and in its wake, a new confidence has grown. A new hope for possibility.

I recently shared the news that I was cleared to return to my full range of physical activity with a group of Black women friends—friends who prayed with me a few days before surgery. I shared that I was going back to “business as usual.” One friend responded to remind me that this wasn’t true. I was not going back to a life with the “usual business that wasn’t aligned with the softness I deserved.”

She was right—No more funny business. No more strange fruit.

Landing Tracks

1. How do you define growth beyond numbers, output or hustle? Are there ways you are prone to measure growth through external validation? What needs to be dismantled to make space for something new?

2. What do you think of the “do nothing” approach of Fukuoka or Odell? Can you see yourself applying their ideas to any part of your life? What does your “do nothing” resistance look like?

3. What kind of work, relationships, and practices do you want to nourish? What kinds do you need to cut off?

1. It was benign.

2. Odell, 194. You can find this book and others that are inspiring this series at my bookshop!

3. I didn’t get to #2 without having had a few conversations where people who, in their defense, didn’t get how podcasts worked) were confused by my situation.

4. This was well before the Notes app and all these new integrations that seem to be added on whenever another social media app with that feature fails us in some major way.

5. We can’t trust these apps. We will have to put our trust somewhere else.

6. These are embodied practices because, despite what they would have us believe, the apps and sites we access through our phones and laptops have an impact on our bodies. This is an embodied experience, don’t let them fool you.

7. You can read more about archival devotion, which is what I call this approach here:

at your leisure

8. I explore this more in this post:

"a place for keeping": writing as a practice of care

9. Journey with me into the permission to linger:

permission to linger