As I have grown older, I’ve felt the distinct slowing in my being. The world seems to be speeding up all around me and I find myself not wanting to keep up as much as I used to. It takes too much energy to follow every trend and stay on top of new things.
Those fast moving things don’t feel so important to me anymore. I want to be relevant so I listen to all kinds of music and expose myself to new technologies as much as I can stand it. But it doesn’t seem so vital or even very easy anymore.
The pace of life seems so much faster now than it was when I was younger, before technology zoomed us into hyperspeed all the time. I find myself craving a slower pace. I like the move toward slow food and the trend toward disengaging from autopilot. I saw an article about slow making the other day, going back to the older ways of building things and putting things together by hand instead of completely relying on other machines to make it happen.
There isn’t much that can compare, for instance, with a hand tailored suit, where the lapel interfacing is sewn in manually, curved over the seamstresses hand to give it the shape needed to make it a fine garment.
As a writer, I feel left behind some when I look at what magazines are publishing, magazines that I used to write for and feel perfectly comfortable with knowing in my knower what the editor wanted. Now, I’m a bit lost. The topics don’t feel so evergreen to me now, instead they are fleeting and flying by, and they don’t feel so weighty.
As a writer, I find myself gravitating toward more classic themes, like character, old fashioned customer service, the importance of family and self-awareness, natural treatment of disease, and independence.
I just need to remember my pull to the timeless whenever I start to feel overwhelmed by the transitory. It’s going to be OK. I have a lot to offer to this hyperspeed world and I am really settling into my voice. Life is good.
Photo by Maite Tiscar on Unsplash