flailing about

I have been gifted a pause in my life. A rare moment of no pressure to do…anything. Which of course means I am rethinking everything.

What am I doing with my life? What matters to me most? How do I make meaning and money at the same time?

These three words keep popping up. Create. Beauty. Slowly.

I try them on in different contexts and find they fit well in most. They feel inviting, inspiring — yet not scary. I can hear them in the micro and in the macro. I get carried away as I picture them on the front page of my first bestseller.

I have had similar love affairs in the past. Words that worm their way deep into my tissue and enchant my motions for a month or two. Sometimes, they come from someone else. Sometimes they just appear out of nowhere like these three.

They are not original or momentous…but worth exploring.

Why slowly?

When I say slow, I don’t necessarily mean slow.

‘Allowing things to take the time they take’ encompasses it well. For me, this mostly means…a while.

As a slow person in a fast world, I generally have a background buzz of resistance and anxiety. Resistance against my own natural pace of doing and being. Anxiety that the world will disapprove.

These past few weeks have felt like unclenching my skull around my brain. It literally feels like there is more air for my mind to breathe up there.

More space to find beauty in the mundane.

Beauty everywhere

As I am not working, I have taken over all housekeeping duties. There is a small angry feminist having a tiny rant somewhere — but actually, it just feels fair.

The garden is a pleasure and a meditation. The indoor duties not so much…until these lovely three words came to my rescue.

Cleaning, it turns out, is the continual and cyclical creation of beauty.

The spaces in which we live are reflections of ourselves and evolve with us. With time and attention, they flourish into relational ecosystems that live with us rather than around us.

Cooking too.

As beauty becomes the protagonist, I find myself buying the most colorful vegetables and relishing the art of composing them into visual and sensual delights.

This is, after all, the purpose of their vibrancy. To tempt us into eating the variety we need.

Perhaps the time that I have now is the time that we are meant to have. The time we need to interact with our surroundings meaningfully and healthfully.

Writing

Although external pressure lifted, I was still pushing myself to write more, faster, better.

I felt empty and panicky and nearly gave up. I was obsessing over headlines, hooks and holding attention. The beauty was missing. Every blossoming idea was pruned to death by the ‘readability shears’.

I am just beginning and my journey needs to take the time it takes. If it doesn’t, I may miss something important. I may miss myself in trying to find everyone else. If I listen to the background buzz of more, faster, better, I could perhaps become an efficient writer but not a beautiful one.

Do we need more efficiency in the world? I don’t think so. In our endless quest for efficiency, we have banished much tedium, but also squeezed some of the sweetest juice out of life.

I refuse to do this to my life. And I refuse to do this to my writing. I want the juice, pulp and all.

Create. Beauty. Slowly.