Demons and deletions
The big takeaway from this brief edition of the newsletter: I have a new essay at Plough Quarterly out called "The Noonday Demon." It's about acedia, a fourth-century attention disorder that afflicted the earliest monastics living in the Egyptian desert. Acedia is restless inactivity. It's an anxious yet unproductive state that is a parody of both work and leisure. I'm betting you know the experience of acedia, too, because you live in the same technological desert as I do.
Here is an excerpt of the essay:
Acedia gets you to wish your life away in anticipation of something that will validate your worth as a person. If you feel lonely and anxious in your work now, then maybe you’ll feel better at that meeting tomorrow, or when you get a new project next week, or after you get a new job altogether, “an easier, more convenient craft.” Of course, the deadlines arrive and pass, or you begin the new job and ease into its crevices, and you’re just as anxious and alone. Soon you’re thinking about the next project. You’re on LinkedIn again. The sun is perfectly still.
If you liked my Commonweal essay from earlier this year, "Taming the Demon," you might like this new one. It is also about work, monks, deserts, and demons. And if you like the Plough essay, go back and read the Commonweal one! One last time, here's "The Noonday Demon."
This newsletter is shorter than normal because I accidentally deleted a post just as I was about to finish it. I have no idea what sequence of errant keystrokes led me to select and then overwrite all of the the 600-some words I had written about the importance of the personal essay as a literary form. All I know is, I can't seem to recover those words. I spend more time writing these newsletters than you think (or than I should?), and I don't have it in me to rewrite the whole thing right now. Maybe another time. The good news is, I have other personal essays coming out over the next few months in various magazines. So maybe I will get a chance to say again what I want to say.
Thanks for reading.
Jon