I Don't Want to Speed Up

Telling the difference between “I’m afraid” and “I don’t want to do that” can be tricky.

They almost got me today.

I’m redoing my website to showcase my writing portfolio, featuring some of my favorites and some things I’ve written for clients over the past many years, which is why you just received two Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu articles from me.

As I’m sending out applications and cold-contacting some people offering my writing services I figured a harmless enterprise would be to switch on one of the professional copywriting podcast episodes a friend sent to me back in March. A little inspiration, perhaps, a little down-to-brass-tacks practicality…

By the end of the single episode I was writhing internally with anxiety about how I wasn’t enough, wasn’t thinking big enough, and wasn’t taking enough of a risk. I needed to change things and be a better challenger for the Way Things Are.

Thankfully, I was listening to this on a hike with my dog Maggie, surrounded by birdsong and wildflowers and this lovely southern-California feature called artemisia that perfumes the air along many trails with a subtle hint of sage. When the podcast finished, I didn’t turn on another one.

A few niches flashed into my mind, tumbled over, met resistance, made room for the next one.

Next I was visited by a bunch of self-judgment (some of it worthy of looking at in a healthy way).

During the drive back home from the hike I realized why I haven’t been listening to these types of podcasts in a while.

I don’t want what they’re selling.

I don’t want to speed up.

I don’t want to be encouraged to go faster.

So I certainly don’t want to know how to go faster.

The world is moving too fast.

Virtually all the problems in the world are at least assisted by this incessant need to go bigger, be bigger, make more impact on a wider scale.

This permeating dissatisfaction.

Making decisions in a hurry all the time.

The refusal to be still lest it be eaten by its frantic need to escape. I feel like the rubber band is stretched and it’s been needing to snap back for a decade or two.

The balance between vision and presence is weighted too far toward vision. The vision itself is too short-sighted to begin with.

What would happen if inventors asked a few more “why?’s” and “what will happen after that?’s” when they think of a new invention?

Would the next fidget spinner still get made when we realized that it would go from inception to trash before the next short-lived idea behind it was even thought of?

Out of site, with its packaging and product piling up at the dump or in the ocean.

All in the name of fast! Bigger! Now! Give the people what they want - or really give them another way to deal with not having what they want for just a few more minutes at a time.

I’ve been doing a lot, a lot less. I don’t know if any of you would like to trade places in my life, which sometimes stops me from talking about what I’m up to.

Is it glamorous enough to share that the most luxurious thing I know of is the pleasure of sitting in the shade of a tree on a sunny day?

Is it in someway helpful to broadcast that I’ve started going on long walks to and from places and that it feels right in my bones to use my energy to do it instead of driving?

It’s like I hear a calling to the center! The Center! Not Out There. Be at Home!

I find less and less that I want to be out there doing big things, whatever that means. The only exception would be if there were people I loved out there to do them with. And I still worry that this means I’m somehow worth less because I’m interested in listening to my friends talk more than I want to build my own empire, even a well-intentioned one.

I ask myself, “Does this mean that I’m a failure?” and “What if I’m a sucker if I only want to do what feels easy and natural to me and I don’t want to adapt to things outside of that?”

It makes me wonder if there’s something wrong with me if I don’t force myself more.

But for me it also feels exactly right — I’m very feminine-essenced. I glow when I can sit back and relax and receive what unexpected connections the universe brings me, a follower in the dance. I glow when I work with people in cooperation. I’d rather be a key player who maintains a ship’s running than to steer it. Currently I experience a version of that. I’m the chef and help manage the house in exchange for rent with my sometimes-unpleasant 77-year-old caretaking charge along with three other women with varied schedules.

So that’s what’s up with me.

Slowing down, manual living, offering less, listening more, using my hands and feet and exposing my senses to whatever I notice on longer and longer walks. Practicing my ability to concentrate by staring at a candle flame focused (or trying to) on one thought. Moving my body every night to a simple routine I found on an app.

These simple things change so much in my life. I may not be on a homestead with things to tend yet, but taking little pieces and making them into practices is inevitably getting somewhere.