the luxury of attention

I’ve been needing to disconnect in a way I haven’t been able to lately.

Not the step away from your phone for a few hours but stay half-tethered to everything you are not looking at approach. I mean the kind where your mind actually lets go of the background noise, the emails, the decisions, the sense that something is always waiting for you to respond.

I went to stay at The Shelborne recently, in a space designed by Kelly Wearstler, and I went with a friend, just a few days of being somewhere else entirely. It felt simple and unstructured in the best way. No agenda. No work slipping in at the edges of the day.

The Shelborne sits on the beach and has been there for years, but it has gone through a major renovation. It holds the bones of something longstanding with the energy of something newly imagined. That tension is the first thing you feel when you walk in.

The space itself made it easier than I expected.

Pale wood floors softened the entire room. Mirrors caught light and bent it slightly so nothing felt fixed or still for too long. There was an 80s deco thread running through it, reinterpreted in a quieter language, layered fabrics in muted neutrals, punctuated by small, sharp moments of color. A red coral sculpture against a mauve marble wall. Caramel toned furniture that grounded everything without heaviness. It all felt considered. Designed, but not trying to impress you.

At some point I noticed I hadn’t reached for my phone in hours. Not out of effort, but because nothing in the room was asking me to leave it. That kind of design is rare. Even in beautiful spaces we are often still pulled outward, toward capturing, documenting, staying slightly elsewhere. This room did the opposite. It brought me back into myself without asking.

I’ve been thinking about that contrast a lot across the different parts of my life. At work, where we’ve had major restructuring, a professional renovation of its own. Systems being reconsidered. Structures being rebuilt. Familiar ways of operating being cleared to make space for something new.

But in that room, none of it followed me in.

Just the joy of the interplay. Light on wood, fabric against stone. And the quiet of staying where I was.

More soon,

L