Pineapple Slice 10: Attention, Presence & the Quiet Rebellion Against Speed

Over the last ten days, something consistent has been happening across Brida.
Different people. Different formats. Different ages.
Yet the same questions keep surfacing:

Where is my attention going?
What does it mean to be present?
How do we live well inside pressure, noise, and responsibility—without disappearing ourselves?

Here’s what the community explored, together.

1. Atlantic Corridor – “Turning 30, Turning Down the Noise”

With Ismar, Ritesh & The Mayor

A birthday conversation that quickly becomes something deeper.

Ritesh turning 30 opens a doorway into adulthood, marriage, responsibility, and the realisation that time doesn’t slow down just because you notice it. Ismar brings the long view—life after ambition, after speed, after illusion—while The Mayor sits between urgency and meaning, searching for the one small “design change” that might shift everything.

This isn’t a motivational talk.
It’s a shared reckoning with noise, rushing, and the quiet fear of insignificance—held together by honesty, humour, and mutual respect.

Conversation themes:

• Aging without drama
• Slowness as a strategy, not a luxury
• Responsibility replacing freedom (and why that’s not all bad)
• Cities, villages, and the loneliness hidden in both

2. “Turning Down the Vacuum Cleaner”

Sarah

Sarah doesn’t describe distraction as a phone problem.
She describes it as a vacuum cleaner: loud, invasive, impossible to ignore.

In this piece, she explores attention as currency, focus as a leaking reservoir, and the courage it takes—especially as a teenager—to choose boundaries in a world designed to steal them.

Her metaphors are vivid, playful, and unsettlingly accurate.
A lightbulb. A vacuum cleaner. Lemon-scented focus.

This is attention literacy from the inside.

Conversation themes:

• The attention economy
• Focus as protection, not discipline
• Phones, fatigue, and choosing where the mind looks
• Quiet pride in self-awareness

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3. Peeling Potatoes – Episode 31: “Resolutions, Rocky Paths & a Potato Called John”

Fruitloop & The Mayor

The year opens not with clarity, but with fog—and that’s exactly the point.

This episode weaves New Year’s resolutions, work pressure, friendship, and existential wobble into something both ridiculous and profound. A literal potato becomes a philosopher. A running goal becomes a metaphor for structure. And Brida quietly appears between the lines—not as a product, but as a lived tension between doing and becoming.

It’s funny. It’s messy. It’s deeply human.

Conversation themes:

• Resolutions without perfection
• Structure vs chaos
• Friendship as a stabilising force
• Meaning hiding inside nonsense

4. “Living in the Now (Across Three Time Zones)”

Atlantic Corridor – Ismar, Ritesh & The Mayor

Three continents. One question: What does “living in the now” actually look like?

Retirement doesn’t create space. Marriage reorganises attention. Responsibility fills the present faster than theory ever could.

This article dismantles the fantasy of calm presence and replaces it with something more honest: being present while busy, distracted, worried, and still showing up.

Conversation themes:

• Presence vs peace
• Internal vs external distraction
• Phones, speed, and fractured attention
• Conversation as a rare shared space

5. “Rituals of Centeredness”

Fruitloop & Sarah

Mornings aren’t just a start—they’re an emotional blueprint.

Through a gentle, grounded exchange, Sarah and Fruitloop explore how rituals, sensory awareness, and small decisions create stability long before the day demands performance.

This is not productivity culture.
It’s nervous-system care, explained simply.

Conversation themes:

• Morning routines as emotional anchors
• Discipline as protection
• Sensory grounding (smell, space, rhythm)
• Becoming someone through repetition

6. “The Presence of Mind: When the World Forces Us to Slow Down”

Lunch with Janita & Frank, with Bruce, Rosii & Nathalie

Here, presence isn’t chosen—it’s imposed.

Weather chaos, travel disruptions, traffic, retirement myths, and cultural rhythms collide in a conversation about what happens when life says stop, whether you like it or not.

Instead of resistance, the group finds clarity, humour, and a shared understanding: slowing down isn’t laziness—it’s recalibration.

Conversation themes:

• Forced stillness
• Nature, disruption, and acceptance
• Guilt around rest
• Presence as clarity, not calm

7. “Embodied Awareness: Living in the Now (and Sometimes in History Class)”

Sarah

This piece asks a deceptively simple question:
Are you living from your head—or your whole body?

Through school, nostalgia, phones, boredom, and candy-floss metaphors, Sarah articulates embodied awareness with rare clarity. Presence becomes physical. Distraction becomes robotic. Time becomes something you don’t fight—you negotiate with it.

Conversation themes:

• Living “from the neck up”
• Body signals as truth
• Phones and emotional absence
• Accepting time instead of rushing it

8. Peeling Potatoes – Episode 32: “Multitasking, Plates & the Myth of Saving Half a Second”

Fruitloop & The Mayor

Multitasking gets put on trial—and mostly found guilty.

Through domestic chaos, parenting routines, kettles, cats, frozen video calls, and German train apps, this episode exposes what multitasking really is: a response to a world that hands us too many plates.

Yet there’s a twist—some multitasking is joyful. Sandcastles count.

Conversation themes:

• Multitasking vs project management
• Structure as relief
• Domestic chaos as philosophy
• The cost of unnecessary complexity

9. “How Brida Tables Came Into Being”

The Mayor

This is the quiet spine of the week.

Not a marketing story. Not a success narrative.
A survival story.

Under pressure, Brida shed what couldn’t carry weight—community-as-product, persuasion, noise—and kept what remained legitimate: a table, a time, a place to speak without evaluation.

It’s a story about choosing slowness when speed feels safer. About removing pressure instead of adding motivation.

Conversation themes:

• Legitimacy over scale
• Survival as fidelity
• Silence as structure
• Meaning without performance

The Thread That Ties It All Together

Across ages, formats, and continents, the Brida community circled the same truth:

Presence is not a feeling.
It’s a practice.
And sometimes, it’s a refusal.

A refusal to rush.
A refusal to perform.
A refusal to let noise decide what matters.

If you read everything this week, you didn’t just consume content.
You stepped into a long, ongoing conversation—one that isn’t trying to fix you, teach you, or optimise you.

It’s simply asking:

Can you stay here a little longer?

And that, quietly, is the Brida invitation.