Life Is What You Pay Attention To

Hi there! It’s me, and I’m still writing here. If you got my email or are reading this directly on my site, thank you for sticking it out with me.

As 2017 comes to a close, I can’t help but feel like this year was just one giant rush of emotions. So many things happened this year that it’s hard to single out just one; there’s simply too many to talk about. For a quick reminder, check out Google's always amazing year in search. 

Yet, I felt it might be the appropriate time to share a short little life update and what I’ve been thinking about lately. After work tomorrow, I’ll be flying up to Seattle to spend a few precious days with my family, who rarely gets together all in the same place. Every time I’m with the whole bunch, it’s such a special treat, and I feel like I need to savor every moment.

What else is new? Perhaps the biggest update I have for you at this time is that in the beginning of November, I resigned my position with the bank to accept a contract content writing opportunity at Google, via a third-party company called Adecco*. In my role, I get to work on the Google campus and feel so inspired by what I see and learn there every single day. It’s truly been a life-changing experience thus far, and I feel grateful every morning I wake up and get ready for work.

Now that you know my career update, I also wanted to share another idea I’ve been thinking about quite a bit lately, which is, “life is what you pay attention to”. I heard this on a podcast and it really resonated with me for some reason. Probably because in our screen-obsessed modern life, our attention is constantly getting ping-ponged from one thing to the next, and at the end of the day, my brain says, “Huh? What did I miss?”.

It’s like Ferris Bueller famously said, life moves fast and if you don’t look around you could miss it. But how does that translate to real life? For too many practical purposes, I can’t just throw out my phone and laptop. In fact, I love the information available at my fingertips, but there obviously needs to be some intention behind the all the time I spend in front of my screen.

That's why intention and attention are going to be at the top of my 2018 list. You can do anything you put your mind to, but you can’t do everything. What we do with our time and who we spend it with can end up being some of the most important decisions of our lives. Which is why, I can’t wait to go home, and spend time with my family. Happy holidays, I hope they’re filled with gratitude and love.

*Adecco is my official employer.