This summer’s road trip taught me two things about myself:
1. I can wash my hair in a bucket
2. I should probably slow down
The first is straightforward. The second thing is something that I’ve been told for years and for years I have not known what it’s supposed to mean, nor how one does it or why a person would want to do it. How do you “slow down” life? Do you go to the beach more? I don’t like going to the beach. Is it choosing to sleep in until 11am on the weekends? Sleeping that late gives me a headache and half the day is over. I like the day! You sleep! These people want me to be less scrappy, cunning alley cat and more laze-on-the-sun-porch farm kitten.
Here in my thirty-sixth year, I’ve inched just a bit closer to understanding what this concept means. For me to be a farm kitten, it would mean taking fewer gigs, traveling less. It would be doing less TV. It would be sleeping in (or at least not getting up at 5:30am most every day.) No more flying back and forth from DC to Chicago. There are certain things that I have incorporated into my life since the trip that are smoothing me out a bit, if you will: heading to bed earlier, more yogurt, allowing myself to watch documentaries on Netflix and just watch them and not feel like I’m wasting my life if I’m not drawing, sewing, etc. at the same time.
Outside those things, though, I’m not slowing for a second. I mean, you gotta be nuts. There is so much cool stuff coming up. There always is! There’s so much to see and do and make. I’ll lie down later and when I do, just think how sweetly I’ll sleep.
One of my favorite writers told a story about how a friend of his said, “Stop working so hard; you’re burning the candle at both ends.” My favorite writer said, “Yes, but it gives a lovely light.”
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