Month: January 2026

Experiment #3: flow and being seen

~ jayeweatherburn ~ Leave a comment

Flow, for me, is a specific mode of attention. It’s sustained, externally oriented, and lightly held. It depends on a certain looseness that’s hard to manufacture, and easy to lose.

Awareness of being observed alters that mode. The looseness goes. Attention turns inward. I begin evaluating rather than participating: monitoring myself instead of staying with what’s happening.

The shift is subtle but its effects are immediate. Flow doesn’t survive that shift. The moment attention is redirected toward how the work appears, the work itself recedes.

What brings it back isn’t reassurance or confidence. It’s forgetting: the brief moment when I stop tracking myself and the work takes over.

That forgetting feels like freedom. Fragile, but essential. It’s where the work actually happens.

Experiment #2: a constraint

~ jayeweatherburn ~ Leave a comment

Ten sentences. No more, no less.

  1. I’m writing this with a limit, not to be clever, but to make starting easier.
  2. The constraint gives things a shape and changes how I pay attention.
  3. I notice the pull to “optimise”: to make this worth the space it takes up.
  4. That impulse is familiar, but I’m practicing not following it.
  5. Working within a boundary makes it clearer what wants to be said now and what can wait.
  6. It shows how quickly I reach for an ending instead of staying with what’s here.
  7. That alone feels worth paying attention to.
  8. Nothing here resolves, and that feels right.
  9. The constraint worked by getting me to the page.
  10. I’m stopping because the boundary says so.