A geographer’s philosophy of attention
I’ve been circling questions about how to be happy and what it means to live a good life. They keep pulling at the same thread. Waymark & Wonder is, in part, my attempt to live inside the question “what does it mean to pay attention well?”
The premise
We cannot consciously choose what we have never noticed.
What I notice shapes what I understand. What I understand shapes the choices I can make. Those choices become the warp and weft of a life.
Map key
Trail Heads and Points of Interest
(or “Ooh, come and look at this!”)
Waymarks don’t dictate the journey. You can still wander off the path if you see something interesting. Four ways in, each a different kind of fieldwork.
Fieldwork
Small-group trips. Travel can unsettle the assumptions created by familiarity. I handle the logistics; the noticing is yours.
Small Findings
Looking again at things that are easy to overlook (as unlikely as butter). Colour first, then texture, sound and scent.
Bearings
Yoga and breath. A little more space between what I feel and how I choose to respond: the body as a way of knowing.
Dispatches
A letter every other week: waymarks I’ve found and questions I’m carrying.
Your guide
Hello, I’m Gemma
I’m a daughter, sister, friend, occasionally a lover, a quilter and bag maker, a weight lifter, part-time yoga teacher – I’m a woman trying to live a good life, and untangle what that means. I definitely don’t have everything figured out. Think of me as a researcher, guide, curator and fellow explorer. We’re shipmates on The Beagle, setting sail for terra incognita.
Geography taught me that nothing exists in isolation. I’ve gone looking for connection through travel, walking, yoga, making, reading, scent, landscape and voice notes to friends that could have been podcasts. This is where I gather what I find and say: ooh, come and look at this.
My first handstand - Getting upside down,perspective changes…
The framework
Not a formula. A lens.
Attention → Understanding → Decision → Action → Flourishing
A cycle rather than a set of stages to complete.
I act before I understand, understand long before I decide, and come round again.
It’s turtles all the way down.
Dispatches
A letter from the field, every other week
Waymarks I’ve found, questions I’m carrying, and the occasional small thing that stopped me in my tracks.