Attend to your bushfires: An Argument for Constructive/Creative Distractions

There have been times when attention has caused me trouble, and distraction has saved me. A piece of fried meat beckoning to me to see how well-fried and crunchy it was and suitable to pair with something that offered adventure for my taste buds or the distraction that saved me from paying attention to all I saw in the mall that made me save money. I have been contemplating some distractions that led me to focus and pay attention to many things that serve me today. This rumination has made me wonder if maybe distractions are inward and repressed curiosity calling for your connection and attention.

Attention and distraction can both function either positively or negatively. In today's world of many distractions, our greatest currency has been how to harness our focus and concentration to lessen distraction. In Judeo-Christian text, there is the story of a young fugitive man, Moses, who was captured by a seeming distraction of a bush that was burning, yet the grass was not consumed. Turning his attention to his distraction (burning bush) calling for his attention was the beginning of a story of liberation that has inspired countless revolutions, movements, liberation struggles, and abolition.

I promised to make this post in relation to one of my recently published articles on Odumeje (see the comment section for a link). Odumeje was not my attention or distraction. Instead, I wanted to understand how celebrities do religion and incorporate their personal faith into their rituals, politics, and polemics of visibility. In fact, it was because of Odumeje's relationship to Nollywood actor Zubi Micheal, then Ada Jesus that he became a mainstay and subsequently Flavor. If you are familiar with my research, you know I am invested in all the diverse ways that celebrity culture intersects along multiple fields and disciplines. But my distraction led me to this article.

So, these days, when I find myself distracted, I ponder a multitude of questions. What purpose does this distraction serve? What new possibilities might this open to where I am or where I'm going?

To be clear, distraction alone did not produce the article. I do the work of turning my distraction to my attention, and in the process, I published this, which is still closely connected to my core area of research.

So I thought to myself, maybe we need to coin a word like "constructive distraction" or "creative distraction" as an alternative to fix a certain thinking that makes "distraction" the catchphrase for indiscipline and lack of self-control.

This is admittedly a quick and simple sketch of a complex process.

For academics like me, if "disciplinary police" (those who fight interdisciplinary/transdisciplinary research) scare you from your distraction/attraction, listen to/follow/check out the publication profile of one of the academic geniuses I know, Saheed Aderinto, whose research tentacles spread so widely from human to non-human history.

Maybe you need to allow distraction to seduce you a little bit, even if it is to consider a possibility without exploring it.

Remember, reader discretion is advised.