Time without Distractions

I was reading a little about nature artists/writers and I came across some writing by Hannah Hinchman about attention, meditation, and creation. It struck a nerve as I had just been writing to myself last night about how after two weeks of voluntarily depriving myself of my usual distractions and entertainment, being without work, and of course being out of a relationship, time had begun to slide together and leaving me in an odd state of mind. She writes:
"To follow the actual workings of attention when it thinks it isn't being watched, I have been willing to go into dark places... Stepping outside the comfortable padding of books, music, news, movies, magazines, conversations, all the reassuring attention absorbers, is a necessary act of exposure. In fact, removing all the padding must be one of our deepest fears, judging by the enormous amount of ingenuity we've employed over the centuries to keep from doing it. The art of making something from nothing is our greatest virtue, and we can't and shouldn't try to thwart it..."
I am sure there are healthier things I could have passed a couple weeks doing, besides sitting around reading, and she was probably talking more about immersing ones-self in solitary outdoor experience as a form of meditation, but warm times are ahead, and I am sure I will find plenty of time for that.
Another reason the quote popped out was, of course, The term 'making something from nothing' which made me think of Sartre, as this is very close to his definition of consciousness.
Sartre writes:
"Thus the rise of man in the midst of being which "invests" him causes a world to be discovered. But the essential and primordial moment of this rise is the negation. Man is the being through whom nothingness comes into the world."
That is, the universe is not lacking in its being, it simply Is. Man creates nothingness, and only consciousness can bring about nothingness, yet without it, no act of perception/consciousness could take place, for in every object we perceive, there is simultaneously an understanding that the object might otherwise Not exist. So, in a way consciousness simultaneously creates an alternate beingness (the percieved world) and creates nothingness.
As he puts it:
"from the very fact that we presume that an Existent can always be revealed as nothing, every question supposes that we realize a nihilating withdrawal in relation to the given, which becomes a simple presentation, fluctuating between being and nothingness. It is essential therefore that the questioner have the permanent posibility of dissociating himself from the causal series which constitutes being, and which can produce only being... and that he nihilates himself in relation to the thing questioned by wrenching himself from being in order to be able to bring out of himself the possibility of non-being. Thus, in posing a question, a certain negative element is introduced into the world. We see nothingness making the world iridescent, casting a shimmer over things."
Hah, Hannah also had a great quote about her cats:
A room without a couple of cats would be a deadly room. Cats produce soothing brain-waves, in much the same way that plants give off oxygen.