Slow It Down
Internal Struggles of a Busy Body
Okay, so you remember all my writings on flying through life tasking myself with utter lack of control because I have an accursed sense of worth tied to productivity?
What would you think if I told you that I don’t really want to live that way?
One could muse: “Well, yes. Of course the writer doesn’t want to live like a moth fluttering around in a room full of brightly burning open flames.”
What I crave is a slow practical life. What I fill my life with demands an entirely different lifestyle. I get glimpses of the slow life and I’m ready to retire and tend to a garden and write all day. But I also understand the environment in which I was raised and currently live in dictates and rewards a busy lifestyle, materially.
Slow life for some reason, in my mind carries a stigma of being time wasted. It may be linked to my constant desire for feeling productive and valuable.
But now is the time for change.
My focus will be in my creative work, living slower, appreciating each day and trying to be as present as possible.
What are things you do to practice presence?
I 100% struggle with living in the present. The phrase “what if (fill in the blank disaster here)?” haunts me constantly. So I try to remember to take things as they come and live one day/hour/minute at a time. For example I’ll think “WHAT IF I LOSE MY JOB?!?!”and then remember, “That’s not happening right now. Right now you’re getting up to use the restroom because otherwise you’re going to pee your pants at the office and that would be a bad look as the kids say.”
Honestly being present is so hard in a world that's trying to constantly distract you too