What an odd year.

How I failed at slowing down, and what I'm trying instead.

I've just lived a very strange year, in a series of strange years.

Until last summer, the narrative thread of my life seemed pretty straightforward. I moved from city to city. I completed my education, got married, started a career. Even when I abandoned that career to start my own business, it made sense. In retrospect, of course, this is where I'd end up, given who I am.

But life took a sharp right turn when we decided to sell our house and move out of the city. We left our beloved little home and our little garden of roses and our little postage stamp lawn and settled in on 5 acres overlooking a forested canyon, with room for a big garden, fruit trees, maybe more animals someday (goats, I hope).

It's a dream, really. I have absolutely no regrets. I do not miss the city, even as someone who has lived in them all my life. I feel incredibly lucky to be here.

But my dreams of slowing down and living a simpler life have been just that – dreams.

I've been consumed with both my work (which I love) and keeping up with all the projects at home. It's a never-ending to-do list. I often feel I'm on a treadmill going just a bit too fast, with no way to hop off.

For example, I'm ashamed to say that I've almost entirely stopped reading for pure pleasure, because my brain feels so tired. I rarely write outside of work. I've stopped drawing. I can't seem to finish this sweater I've been knitting for over a year. Even my sewing projects have slowed to a trickle.

And the reason is this: Everything feels like one more to-do.

I'm getting a lot done. But I've somehow convinced myself that I can't afford to be unproductive. The result is that every single thing I do feels like a "should". And if it's not elevated to the level of "should", I simply don't have the time.

I imagined life in the country to be a bit different, a slower and easier pace of life without the distractions of the city.

I've begun to realize that a turn towards slowness, to enjoying life, to doing nothing sometimes, to being creative, to enjoying process over results – none of those things can be forced by external circumstances.

You can't simply move to a slow place and expect to be a different person. It can set the stage no doubt, but it can't undo decades of conditioning on its own.

And that is why I've begun this project, as a place to share the slow, quiet, internal journey towards enjoying every moment of this short life. When I write, the aperture of my attention seems to open. I think that's the promise of every creative endeavor, to expand your lens on the world.

What to Expect

So that's the idea behind this newsletter, to use creativity in all its forms to learn how to slow time down. And I'd like to invite you along with me.

You can expect to hear about the things that interest me most: time, memory, attention, creative practice, the human brain, rural life, making things, food. I’ll do my best to connect these threads together.

And because I do best with a little structure, here is my promise to you. Each week, I'll share a little prompt, some tiny thing I want to do to shift my attention, enjoy the creative process, see the world in a new way, or make something new. These will be very small things, intended to simply jolt my perspective a little. And you can join me!

I'll also share links that I've found interesting, including articles that make me think (head), pieces that make me feel (heart), and things to make and do (hands).

If you're a creative person who feels beaten down by the relentless pace of your life, welcome. The circumstances of life will probably not slow down for most of us, as I've learned. Let's figure out how to slow it from the inside instead.

Prompt 1: Hit Publish

It's taking every once of willpower for me to hit publish on this first newsletter.

A big part of me wants to wait until my circumstances are perfect, when I have a perfect writing routine in place, a system for collecting links together, a few things written in the bank in case I get busy. It's been like this a long time. Eventually, I just said to hell with it and decided to write and share today.

There is no perfect set of circumstances for creating, and waiting for things to be ideal is one of my number one creative blocks. So I'm going to let things be a little messy and find ways to improve as I go.

This week, I'm hitting publish. What's one thing you're avoiding creating because you don't have exactly the perfect set-up? What is it are you waiting for? And what's one tiny step you can take this week to get started even if it's messy, hard, or imperfect?

Share with me in the comments!

And now, some things you might like to click…

Head, Heart, Hands

Things to make us think, feel, and do.

• The biggest barrier to mindfulness for me is definitely boredom. My brain is always trying to convince me there’s something more exciting to think about than what’s right in front of me. I love this approach of allowing yourself to feel surprised.

• Perhaps related, the novelty fallacy biases us towards what’s new and different.

• I greatly enjoyed this podcast interview with psychologist Kimberley Wilson on whole body mental health, which explores the many ways our bodies form a huge component of our mental health.

• The perfect conditions for a creative block, part of the Blocktober series from Mason Currey. Love this.

• Plant Magick, from The Library of Esoterica series. Looks like a promisingly weird book.

• Ann Finkbeiner on long haulers. “But these long-haul people, they find a thing they want to do, that needs doing, that they do well, and they do it for the rest of their lives.”

• I highly recommend Suleika Jaouad’s The Isolation Journals. This piece on making friends has inspired me to work more on building community out here.

• I had a bumper crop of apples this year and spent an entire day making and canning apple butter (well worth it). But pumpkin butter is much easier and equally delicious.

• How to roast and freeze peppers for the winter. You should definitely be reading The Art of Doing Stuff if, as the tagline suggests, you are someone who likes to “sweat, swear, and do stuff.”

Enjoyed this at all? Let me know! I’d love to hear from you.