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Dear Reader,

This weekend begins an experiment I’ve never done before. A book study with my own book. Usually Thursdays here are reserved for an essay behind the paywall, but today’s is for everyone. I want to talk about my own relationship with leading book studies and why they’re important, how to start your own, and gently invite you to join us this weekend for eight weeks in a row of deepened research.

The first book study I ever facilitated was an Artist Way Book Study twelve years ago. I have since facilitated three more, using the original book and also the spinoff Walking In This World (a personal favorite — shall I bring this back? Sound off in the comments)

The Artist’s Way, with all it’s flaws and inaccessabilities, provides a clear twelve week structure for moving through the book - allowing for it to be a study. Anyone can organize their own book club or study to go through the book for free, but I have often hosted it for $5/month behind the paywall of my newsletter with one or two zooms to check in.

This both acts as an incentive for free subscribers to upgrade as well as limits the group to a manageable amout of participants. Plenty of people will also charge a full workshop fee if they are hosting live zoom events for each week where they act as facilitator and walk people through the book.

Getting through The Artist’s Way is hard as hell. Raise your hand if you’ve stopped at week four or seven or nine or hell even week two. If you don’t have outside support like therapy or support groups it can be a lot. This is why I find a book study to be so helpful, it anchors you in accountability and community.

When I wrote The Practice of Attention I knew I wanted to treat it as a text book of sorts, that I could teach something alongside it. Because so much of the book is about the devotion and discipline of attention a two hour or even three week workshop didn’t feel right. I felt as though I wanted to spread the book out over two months, really giving it the study time it needed.

The book study is mostly broken up by chapters, week by week. You can always be behind on the reading because the first twenty minutes of each session are dedicated to quiet reading time. When we start on Sunday you’ll want to have read the Introduction and the first chapter, What Are We Avoiding? If you don’t have access to your book and you just ordered it let me know and I can help you get caught up.

The book study also includes a special Notion Template for you to track projects, writing, and reading during the study.

We also have a Discord Group for connetcing with each other each week between our live calls. All calls are recorded if you can’t make it live.

To me this is about teaching my own material, which is a quilt stitched together of the legacies of so many of my ancestors and mentors. It is a way to practice doing an attention audit in real time, testing out the edges of a digital detox, refining your many practices, and ultimately shaping your whole life toward being of service.

In my own home this week there has been a lot of fear, a lot of scarcity. As war rages on we ask ourselves : what is our role in the web? And more and more I’m asking about the small web, the town of 102 people web, the county of 3000 people web, not the World Wide Web.

I’m getting granular in my actions and in my service, focusing on what is right in front of me and my in person community, while also holding the space for the beautiful online cohort that is forming.

There are scholarships available for everyone using the code, please just reply to this email to let me know you need one. Full price and scholarship prices never have interest when broken up into two and three part payment plans. With a scholarship it is $32.50/mo for three months.

I’d love to have you in the room. Reading quietly with us, studying with us, experimenting with us. This is an extremely conversational experience. There are no slides and there is no lecture. There will be writing prompts and things to guide you through. But it’s really about seeing each other through the experience of reading the book.

If financial access if a barrier, please let me know. The world is a hellscape and I want you in the room. A place to strengthen our own practices so that ultimately we may give to others.

And if it’s not the right timing or the right set up, I encourage you to start your own The Practice of Attention Book Club. People often invite me to speak at their bookclubs over zoom or in person and it always makes me so happy, no group too small.

Studying books in the company of others is a briliant way to attune your attention and create long term devotion. I believe in you and would love to cheerlead for you as you repair your fractured attention.

Plus I made a really cute website for it on Canva.

Wishing you a beautiful day, and I look forward to seeing some of you the next eight Sundays at 2pm PST / 5pm EST for a fruitful discussion on attention.

→ info@codycookparrott.com
→ www.codycookparrott.com
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Beyond this paywall lives the link to Cody’s World : My digital garden where I organize in process projects like my MFA thesis and creative oracle card deck project. Dance videos, behind the scenes of business, and more!