Entering the Space-out competition: I tried to be the best at doing nothing – but my opponent had a secret weapon
I am someone who finds it extraordinarily difficult to sit still or be quiet. On one family road trip, my mother challenged me not to speak for 20 minutes, with a prize of $100 for my efforts. I lasted approximately 30 seconds. My ADHD diagnosis at 32 was the natural progression of my life.
The Space-out competition, held in Melbourne on Monday, was the ultimate test of whether I could fight my own nature and embrace nothingness. Created by South Korean artist Woopsyang as a response to her own experience of burnout, the competition has been running for more than a decade around the world with a simple proposition: a mini-city of competitors, all dressed as their jobs, sit in a public space doing absolutely nothing for 90 minutes.
Related: 'A diagnosis can sweep away guilt': the delicate art of treating ADHD
Laughing, chatting, using technology or falling asleep results in disqualification – 'lifeguards' patrol around monitoring everyone's activity, or lack thereof. A large yellow card is a warning, and a red one is a disqualification. Participants can raise smaller coloured cards to ask for warmth, water, a massage or to exit the competition. Every 15 minutes 'doctors' measure participants' heart rates. The watching crowds vote on their favourite competitor, which, when combined with the heart rate measurement, determines the overall winner.Because I am a self-respecting journalist, my outfit is a fedora adorned with a card reading PRESS. My competitors include an actual dog, an elderly man (who turns out to be the oldest-ever participant in the competition), a woman sitting in a tub with a functioning fountain on her head, a Teletubby, a chef (with a Ratatouille toy on their head) and a bunch of young kids.
We're all invited to write our reasons for participating on a board the public can read and vote on. The answers range from earnest to silly. 'To calm my nervous system,' one reads. 'I'm extremely unemployed,' reads another.
Woopsyang comes to the stage, wearing the traditional male Korean ceremonial garb, including the wide-brimmed gat, and makes a speech via an unfurling ribbon. 'Sometimes doing nothing can be the most powerful and valuable act,' it reads. We participate in stretching and aerobic exercises before sitting on our mats. The timer begins.
Out of the corner of my eye, I can see my partner taking photos of me, but I try to ignore him and focus on a fixed point in front of me. I try not to move. I'm desperate to get up, to shake my limbs, but I keep sitting. My mind is not blank, but I try to engage the meditation techniques my Buddhist mother taught me.
I can hear comedian commentators Harry Jun and Oliver Coleman telling the crowd that the young boys left the competition 20 minutes in, that warnings have already begun to be handed out, that someone's ice-cream has melted. I want to look around, but I can't. I can hear the public around me. I feel like an animal in a zoo.
The only marker of time is when a doctor approaches to measure my heart rate; I'm surprised to find the 15-minute increments feel shorter every time. Each time a doctor comes over, I know I'm closer to my goal – and my heart rate is steadily decreasing. I'm in the zone, baby.
I raise my blue card once to ask for water, and my yellow one once for warmth, which turns out to be a small sock with a heat bag in it (not useful!). But after a while, doing nothing becomes quite pleasant. My mind is still not quite blank but I enter a liminal state. The sound of the crowd has become white noise. When the final whistle is blown, I'm shocked that it has been an hour and a half. I could happily have sat and done nothing for much longer.
Alas, I do not place – the fountain lady, who admits that the trickling water in her costume was designed to make her fellow contestants need to pee, is declared the winner. I find out later via Instagram that she has been working on the costume for months, unlike mine, which I made in about two minutes. She deserves the win.
But winning is kind of beside the point of the Space-out competition. I proudly tell my family that I managed to sit still and be quiet for 90 minutes straight in public. I won't get $100 from my mum for this but I finally won the bet, after all.
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Yahoo
15 hours ago
- Yahoo
Entering the Space-out competition: I tried to be the best at doing nothing – but my opponent had a secret weapon
I am someone who finds it extraordinarily difficult to sit still or be quiet. On one family road trip, my mother challenged me not to speak for 20 minutes, with a prize of $100 for my efforts. I lasted approximately 30 seconds. My ADHD diagnosis at 32 was the natural progression of my life. The Space-out competition, held in Melbourne on Monday, was the ultimate test of whether I could fight my own nature and embrace nothingness. Created by South Korean artist Woopsyang as a response to her own experience of burnout, the competition has been running for more than a decade around the world with a simple proposition: a mini-city of competitors, all dressed as their jobs, sit in a public space doing absolutely nothing for 90 minutes. Related: 'A diagnosis can sweep away guilt': the delicate art of treating ADHD Laughing, chatting, using technology or falling asleep results in disqualification – 'lifeguards' patrol around monitoring everyone's activity, or lack thereof. A large yellow card is a warning, and a red one is a disqualification. Participants can raise smaller coloured cards to ask for warmth, water, a massage or to exit the competition. Every 15 minutes 'doctors' measure participants' heart rates. The watching crowds vote on their favourite competitor, which, when combined with the heart rate measurement, determines the overall I am a self-respecting journalist, my outfit is a fedora adorned with a card reading PRESS. My competitors include an actual dog, an elderly man (who turns out to be the oldest-ever participant in the competition), a woman sitting in a tub with a functioning fountain on her head, a Teletubby, a chef (with a Ratatouille toy on their head) and a bunch of young kids. We're all invited to write our reasons for participating on a board the public can read and vote on. The answers range from earnest to silly. 'To calm my nervous system,' one reads. 'I'm extremely unemployed,' reads another. Woopsyang comes to the stage, wearing the traditional male Korean ceremonial garb, including the wide-brimmed gat, and makes a speech via an unfurling ribbon. 'Sometimes doing nothing can be the most powerful and valuable act,' it reads. We participate in stretching and aerobic exercises before sitting on our mats. The timer begins. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see my partner taking photos of me, but I try to ignore him and focus on a fixed point in front of me. I try not to move. I'm desperate to get up, to shake my limbs, but I keep sitting. My mind is not blank, but I try to engage the meditation techniques my Buddhist mother taught me. I can hear comedian commentators Harry Jun and Oliver Coleman telling the crowd that the young boys left the competition 20 minutes in, that warnings have already begun to be handed out, that someone's ice-cream has melted. I want to look around, but I can't. I can hear the public around me. I feel like an animal in a zoo. The only marker of time is when a doctor approaches to measure my heart rate; I'm surprised to find the 15-minute increments feel shorter every time. Each time a doctor comes over, I know I'm closer to my goal – and my heart rate is steadily decreasing. I'm in the zone, baby. I raise my blue card once to ask for water, and my yellow one once for warmth, which turns out to be a small sock with a heat bag in it (not useful!). But after a while, doing nothing becomes quite pleasant. My mind is still not quite blank but I enter a liminal state. The sound of the crowd has become white noise. When the final whistle is blown, I'm shocked that it has been an hour and a half. I could happily have sat and done nothing for much longer. Alas, I do not place – the fountain lady, who admits that the trickling water in her costume was designed to make her fellow contestants need to pee, is declared the winner. I find out later via Instagram that she has been working on the costume for months, unlike mine, which I made in about two minutes. She deserves the win. But winning is kind of beside the point of the Space-out competition. I proudly tell my family that I managed to sit still and be quiet for 90 minutes straight in public. I won't get $100 from my mum for this but I finally won the bet, after all.
Elle
18 hours ago
- Elle
Carrie Gets Asked to Make an Outrageous Delivery on 'And Just Like That...'
Spoilers below. How far would go you to stay in touch with your long-distance, on-and-off boyfriend? Schedule phone calls and frequent visits? Drive hours just to see each other for lunch? Alter your business trips so you can swing by his place? How about smuggle prescription drugs for his teenage son at the behest of his ex-wife? No? Weird. As Carrie continues to navigate her complicated relationship with Aidan, she goes to new lengths to keep their romance alive in season 3, episode 3, 'Carrie Golightly.' Her writing career might help with that. Carrie is now working on a novel, but she's still getting requests for speaking engagements, thanks to her previous work. She's gotten invites from Google and South by Southwest, but the one that intrigues her the most is for a small panel in Virginia—Aidan's home state. She figures she can have a 'casual' lunch with her man on the way home. She doesn't want to make it seem like she's trying too hard and invading his space. But while Carrie is celebrating the soft opening of Anthony's Hot Fellas Bakery, Aidan's ex-wife, Kathy, invades her space. Kathy calls with a strange request, aware that it's embarrassing and a little out of line: Can Carrie pick up some Adderall for her and Aidan's kid, Wyatt? Huh??? Kathy explains that there's a nationwide shortage, and she wouldn't be calling unless she had already tried every other avenue possible. But since Carrie is based in New York and has a lot of connections, could she get her hands on some pills and deliver them when she comes to Virginia? (The next time I think I am asking for too much in life I am going to remember this scene.) Carrie is too nice to say no, but she has no idea how she'll get her hands on the drug 'unless Prada makes Adderall.' Luckily for her, Charlotte, who has two teenage kids, is experienced in this field, as the mothers at Lily and Rock's school are secretly pushing ADHD meds among each other. She approaches two moms in the bakery and snoops around for 30 mg of extended-release Adderall—though she will settle for short-acting—and her contact happens to have a plug for the latter. Who knew Charlotte was in a mommy drug ring? I can't tell if the series is trying to make a point about the limited access to health care and mental health treatment for kids, or if this is just supposed to be a fun bit. It feels too goofy and out of place to be either. When Lisa brings some pastries to the office to work on her docuseries, she's met with some unexpected news: Her producer, Grace, has been offered a job to work on director Steve McQueen's new project, and she plans to accept. The thing is she'll have to leave in a few days, before Lisa's doc is finished. Lisa is furious and feels betrayed, but Grace's position is understandable. Their project has lasted for years longer than they'd planned for, and how can she say no to the director of 12 Years a Slave and Widows? When Lisa takes her anger out on some mashed potatoes later that night, her husband, Herbert, tries to talk her into understanding Grace's side. After mulling it over, she apologizes to Grace and congratulates her on her new gig. Charlotte might be a drug smuggler, but she is not a partier. She worries she's falling behind at work while her younger colleagues stay out late and make sales with high-profile clients at the club. Has she become a boring mom? Her husband, Harry, worries he's also become uncool. So, he decides to enlist Carrie to help him shop for a hip new wardrobe, and Charlotte vows to party with the young ones. It doesn't go over well. After a few drinks, Harry has so much trouble unbuttoning his new tight jeans that he ends up wetting himself, leaving Charlotte to fend for herself at the after-after party. In an effort to be a cool manager, she tries to set up one of her co-workers with a rich Dutch client, but in his coked-up stupor, he mistakes Charlotte's proposal for flirtation. He goes in for a kiss, and it does not end well. Charlotte storms out, finding it's already morning outside. While attending The European Fine Art Fair hung over, Charlotte runs into a fellow school mom who expresses interest in buying a piece from here. It turns out, the mother of two doesn't need to pretend to be in her 20s to be successful at work after all. Miranda asks her British crush, Joy, out to happy hour, pretending it's just so she can ask her for 'camera coaching tips.' Joy seems very interested; though she first advises Miranda to take deep breaths to stay calm during her future TV appearances, things heat up when she begins to give a demonstration. She takes Miranda's hand and puts it to her chest so she can feel her inhaling and exhaling; she does the same to Miranda too. Yeah, I'm thinking there might be a vibe here. And after Miranda's recent experiences with Sister Mary and the guacamole waitress, she could really use a home run. Seema is having a professional problem of her own. Her boss, Elliot, surprise-announces his retirement and that he's selling his shares of the company to Ryan Serhant (the Million Dollar Listing star even makes a quick cameo), rather than propping up Seema as his successor like they previously discussed. In need of a break, Seema decides to join Carrie on her trek to Virginia. While picking her up on the way to the airport, Seema exchanges some rather flirtatious words with Adam, Carrie's gardener. I know it seemed like Carrie and Adam might've had something going on last week, but now it appears sparks are flying between him and Seema. (While she looks down on his graphic tees, she can't deny that Adam is smokin' hot. They've got a kind of Lady and the Tramp vibe going on.) While making sure Carrie's cat, Shoe, doesn't run out of the house, Adam says, while locking eyes with Seema, that he's 'never met a kitty I couldn't bend to my will.' OKAY! As exciting as this development is, does anyone else think that this could be the beginning of a love triangle? During a drive in Virginia, Seema ponders her professional future. (She's driving the rental car because Carrie's license has been expired since 2017. Iconic.) She dreams of having a real estate agency of her own—The Patel Group—but she gets a call from Ryan Serhant, who tells her it's not possible to add her name to their company in its new chapter. Seema's disappointed, but figures things could be worse. While exiting the parking lot, she backs up onto a row of traffic spikes, puncturing the rental car's tires. Apparently, Seema missed the signage saying, 'DO NOT BACK UP.' But she takes it as a sign to not back up in her career—she will move forward instead and go off on her own. I love Seema, but the whole transition felt too forced. Hopefully the rest of her story is handled more gracefully from here. Carrie lucks out—their car being towed is the perfect excuse to call for Aidan's help. He picks her up and asks her to stay over. However, he has not yet told his kids Carrie's visiting, so he asks Carrie to stay in the guest house and plans to give them a heads up first thing in the morning. Before she can forget, she hands Aidan the Adderall delivery—a Ziploc bag with loose orange pills. He looks uncomfortable as he takes it from her. (Is this going to become A Thing?) As Carrie goes to bed, she writes a little more of her draft based on her experiences that day: 'The woman had survived the treacherous journey, mostly in tact.' The journey wasn't that treacherous, though Carrie loves to add a dramatic flair. If anything this week's episode was on the slower side, save for the drug delivery.
Atlantic
19 hours ago
- Atlantic
The Benefits of Refusing
This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors' weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here. In the U.K., when people stop smoking, they say they 'gave it up,' Melissa Febos notes in her new book, The Dry Season. In the U.S., by contrast, it's more common to hear that they 'quit.' She observes that giving something up has a different connotation; to do so is 'to hand it over to some other, better keeper. To free one's hands for other holdings.' The phrasing matters: Giving up feels gentler, and also perhaps more generative. First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic 's books section: The Dry Season is a memoir about the year Febos spent voluntarily celibate, and this week, she wrote for The Atlantic about six books that celebrate refusal and abstinence. The titles she chose opened her eyes to 'all the other kinds of reneging I've experienced, and how many of them led to unforeseen delights,' she writes. In her own book, Febos uses a striking metaphor to explain why she took a break from sex, dating, and even flirtation. Whenever she had a partner, she writes, 'it made sense to keep the channel of one's heart narrowed the width of a single person, to peer through the keyhole at a single room rather than turn to face the world.' Febos realized that she wanted, instead, to widen her aperture, and found that removing something from her life opened her up to all the other things that had escaped her notice. In essence, her book argues, saying no to one thing allows you to say yes to something else. At a talk with the essayist and fellow memoirist Leslie Jamison earlier this week in New York, Febos said that her book is really about finding God, but she told the world that it was about sex because, she joked, it made for better marketing. Her description of discovering the sublime in daily things—such as the 'tang of fresh raspberries and the crispness of clean bedsheets,' as she writes in her recommendation list—moved me. It reminded me that spirituality can be less restrictive and more dynamic than I usually imagine it to be; that it can be found in smaller phenomena and stiller moments. My colleague Faith Hill, in her review of The Dry Season, came to much the same conclusion about the benefits of marshaling one's attention: 'Better to keep drawing it back, again and again, to the world around you: to the pinch in your shoe, to the buds in the trees, to the people—all the many, many people—who are right there beside you.' Febos's book made me wonder what narrow portals I'm looking through in my life, and what I might see if I turn away from them. By Melissa Febos Purposeful refusal, far from depriving us, can make way for unexpected bounty. What to Read Untold Night and Day, by Bae Suah The page-turning plot twists and thrills of a detective novel are often a very effective bulwark against boredom. The Korean writer Bae's novel offers those genre pleasures and more: It is, as Bae's longtime translator Deborah Smith explains in her note, a detective novel by way of a 'poetic fever dream.' Set over the course of one very hot summer night in Seoul, the book follows a woman named Ayami as she attempts to find a missing friend. As she searches, she bumps into Wolfi, a detective novelist visiting from Germany, and enlists him in her quest. Events take on a surreal quality, heightened by both an intense heat wave and the possibility that Ayami and Wolfi may have stumbled into another dimension. Summer's release from our usual timetables can quickly lead to seasonal doldrums. Untold Night and Day, set during the stretched hours of a sweaty, unceasing evening, shimmers at its edges, like midnight in July. — Rhian Sasseen Out Next Week 📚 UnWorld, by Jayson Greene 📚 The Möbius Book, by Catherine Lacey 📚 The Sisters, by Jonas Hassen Khemiri Your Weekend Read What Trump Missed at the Kennedy Center By Megan Garber Little wonder that 'Do You Hear the People Sing?' [from Les Misérables ] has become a protest song the world over, its words invoked as pleas for freedom. Crowds in Hong Kong, fighting for democracy, have sung it. So have crowds in the United States, fighting for the rights of unions. The story's tensions are the core tensions of politics too: the rights of the individual, colliding with the needs of the collective; the possibilities, and tragedies, that can come when human dignity is systematized. Les Mis, as a story, is pointedly specific—one country, one rebellion, one meaning of freedom. But Les Mis, as a broader phenomenon, is elastic. It is not one story but many, the product of endless interpretation and reiteration. With the novel, Hugo turned acts of history into a work of fiction. The musical turned the fiction into a show. And American politics, now, have turned the show into a piece of fan fic.
