Idleism

Not to be confused with “idealism.” Not everything needs to be productive. Life happens in the idle margins, margins that are shrinking by the day.

David Pennington

Even if you don’t plan a whole trip around them, libraries are excellent spots for weary travelers: free, quiet, cool, full of locals, and staffed by people whose job is to help any visitors who walk in the door.

Austin Kleon • Library Tourism - Austin Kleon

Once we were camping outside of Savannah, GA, in the middle of December. The weather was mild, but gloomy. We spent the better part of a day in the downtown library - wifi, quiet, just getting out of the campsite for a bit. Free, which was nice. A good break from our usual bar-hopping tourism.

only when we have shifted into the rest-and-digest response of the nervous system will our brains allow us to reclaim our attention, access the power of our imagination, and unlock our subconscious.

James Doty • Mind Magic

“Popular books such as What You Do Is Who You Are (2019) by the venture capitalist Ben Horowitz carry the implication that being and doing are synonymous. Busyness is a badge of honour, even a sign of moral superiority. Rest, in contrast, is often treated as if it’s passive and pointless. Indeed, I’ve noticed many people hardly think of rest as its

Aggressively uncreative practices such as aimless wandering or birdwatching (or, as she perceptively calls it, “bird listening”) offer “an antidote to the rhetoric of growth” that surrounds us every day. There is ultimately a feminist and environmental case to be made for doing nothing: if we can shift our notion of constructive social behavior fro

Samuel W. Franklin • The Cult of Creativity: A Surprisingly Recent History

It’s ok to wait, and it’s definitely ok to de-wheel from the hamsterism of today’s productivity theatre. In fact, you might need to if you really want to dream up a monster story.

Kristin Posehn • Mary Shelley (and a bit of Steve Jobs)—On the Art of Creative Waiting

I think that “doing nothing”—in the sense of refusing productivity and stopping to listen—entails an active process of listening that seeks out the effects of racial, environmental, and economic injustice and brings about real change.

Jenny Odell • How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy

Does the act of sitting in a park, patiently looking through a pair of binoculars and reading through field guides really deserve to be described with the same adjective usually reserved for angsty hardcore punk music, crusty anarchos and angry outcasts with ripped leather jackets?

If one considers punk as anything defiantly anti-capitalist, anti-es... See more

Alexi Gunner • idle gaze 067: slowpunk

“Slowpunk”

"One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane."

- Nikola Tesla

Trudeau Resignation, Live TV Merger, and Reminiscing Y2K

Definition of FOOTLE

merriam-webster.com

There is a baffling amount of words, most of them negative, around the idea of “not doing much at all.” Wasting time, goofing off, slacking, foolishness