I talk a lot about slow and sustainable living on this blog, but I’m not always great at practicing what I preach. The truth is that life is imperfect, and so are the people that live it.
Last week I completely overdid it. I overcommitted myself at work and overextended myself socially. Before I even got to the end of the week, I was completely fried and frazzled, with a weekend of chores and errands still ahead of me. It was the kind of busy week where I knew I needed to buy groceries, but it took me three days to ACTUALLY make it to the grocery store. I ended the week tired and frustrated, but mainly mad at myself for not being better about setting boundaries, advocating for myself, and finding more time to slow down. It was easy to have a fairly dismal outlook and didn’t take much to jump from thinking “I’m failing at this week” to “I’m failing at life”.
However, as much as I wanted to catastrophize, there were some nice, slow, intentional moments scattered throughout the week. I still made time to move my body and workout a few times, even though it would have been easy to allocate that time to other responsibilities and obligations. I took my dog for a nice, long walk at a local park early in the morning on a Saturday, while the air was still crisp and the park was still quiet. I drank my coffee in the sunshine on my back steps. I made time to meet up with friends, old and new. Even though the week was a complete whirlwind, if I really thought about it, there were a lot of nice moments. I wasn’t a complete failure when it came to intentionality.
Maybe you have weeks like that, too. Weeks where no matter what you do, it feels like you are falling behind and more things are being added to the “To Do” list than are being completed. Weeks where you can’t keep your head on straight and you lose track of the hours and the days without knowing what you did with the time. Weeks where you are just completely drained. The next time you are having a week like that, try to find just a few small things that you can do to ground yourself. Take a 15 minute walk. Meditate for 5 minutes. Drink your coffee in the sunshine. Whatever you can do, no matter how small, it still counts. Slow living isn’t all or nothing, and the little moments mean everything.
Featured Photo by Abbie Bernet on Unsplash
