Slow Like Me
(Page 3 of 3)
March/April 1997
By Jon Spayde, Utne Reader
So, with a little black cartoon cloud over my head, I gathered up the dirty clothes, hamper by hamper. There were eight hampers. I would never, ever, get all this laundry done.
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And then the black cloud turned into a lightbulb. I suddenly saw my way into conscious slowness. The way was acceptance of complete defeat.
I never would get the laundry done. It was an insurmountable mountain. Having run up the white flag, I simply started putting dirty underwear in the washer. There was nothing in the world except me, the white things, the black things, and the funky, colorful accents.
The evening passed like a pleasant dream. The laundry got done. I had overestimated the time it would take by about two days.
Later in the week I experimented with conscious slowness in my home office, which looked, as usual, like it had just been ransacked by Mafia goons. "I'm just arranging papers and reorganizing piles, and I'll be doing it until the end of recorded time," I told myself. Everything got nice and tidy in about 20 minutes.
Surprise! Unhurried but undeterred, animated and cheerful, consciously chosen slowness is not the opposite of speed. It's the middle path between fast and inert--the two extremes I've gravitated toward in my never ending duel with time. When I surrender to the apparent "impossibility" of my task, I stop looking beyond it. When I stop looking beyond it, I get the feeling that I have time. That may be a lie--a fiction; but it's a wonderful, enabling fiction like I weigh almost the same now as I did in college.
This morning, managing editor Craig Cox asked, "How's the slowness piece coming along?" Translation: It's due today.
"It's about half done," I lied.
My preslowness self would have panicked, but I simply delegated all my other tasks, let my phone calls bounce to my beloved voice mail, and wrote as if I would be writing forever.
Now, three hours later, the piece is finished!
But it's way past lunchtime, and I'm starved. Somewhere within a frantic three-block walk of the Utne Reader office there's a bowl of soup that doesn't stand a chance.
Jon Spayde is senior editor of Utne Reader.
Special to Utne Reader, March/April 1997.
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