It's OK to Slow Down

Feeling the season and letting yourself just... be

I did a thing one day last week. A thing I really cannot remember doing in the past 20 years, at least: Nothing.

Well, not exactly nothing. I did a few minutes of social media, checked email a couple times, messaged a few friends. But mostly what I did that day was read a novel. An entire novel.

I have not allowed myself a day like this — unless I’m really sick, and even then — in memory. I have some gauzy vision of myself lazing around reading fiction on Block Island in my late 20s, but that memory is suspect. I am, normally, a restless human.

The day started gloomy. The Great Dark has started here in Minnesota, and, this being the week before Daylight Savings, it was still night several hours after I woke up. I trudged up the stairs to the kitchen (my bedroom is in the basement), flipped the light on, heated water for coffee, thought about the things I needed to do.

I work for myself, ergo I have the meanest, most demanding boss in the world. I am hard on myself. Daily. Mostly it helps me do the things I do, but as a dear friend likes to say, sometimes I need to be kind to my good pal Hank. Truly.

I wrestled with my daily task list while sipping coffee and solving the various New York Times puzzles. I got up, did the bare minimum at my computer, got ready to cook a recipe for my cookbook, then… it felt like the air had been let out of my body. I very likely visibly slumped. I was tired. So very tired.

Back on the couch, I picked up a novel I’d just started the day before, a book about life and messy relationships and complicated desire, and decided OK, just a couple hours. A friend messaged me, I told her what was going on, and she said, “Good. Listen to your body.” And being a wise woman, I took her advice.

I luxuriated in the experience of reading in a quiet house, on my couch in the gray daylight, drinking tea when I wanted, a slice of buttered rye from a loaf I’d made the day prior whenever I felt hungry, gorging myself on this book. Three hundred pages later, the light was fading. The book was done. And like many good books, this one left my head swimming. I needed to move my body, come up for air.

I put some shoes on, a jacket, a hat, and stepped outside.

Bracing chill met me. Not the fierce cold of winter, but the sort of autumn snap that says, “walk in me. I shall keep you cool and comfortable in that puffy jacket.” I turned up the street in the dusk. Busy Minnesotans were furiously raking leaves in the gloaming, getting their sidewalks ready for Halloween. (I just rake my sidewalks.)

Dog walkers everywhere, then a pair of lovers hand in hand — one tucked her head against the other in mid-stride effortlessly, as if this was a practiced move. I made a mental note to learn that move at some point. A man was trying to lure his dog inside with a squeaky toy.

The soft hiss of the wind sighed through fading leaves, and everywhere hung the scent of wet earth and rotting pumpkins, which, carved in all sorts of patterns, glowed on a great many porches. One young woman took a selfie in front of a pumpkin carved to celebrate the Iowa State Cyclones.

I walked miles as the dark seeped in, noting a spot for gingko nuts because well, I’m me and can’t help myself from mentally cataloging every edible thing around me. I was warm and my mind sated, but belly hungry. I stopped at my local spot for a beer and a burger, chatted a bit with the bartenders, then returned home. Ready for sleep and the next day.

The details of my boring little day aren’t important. The fact that I managed to, miraculously, slow down, is what matters.

Living in California, I never learned this. I ran myself at a reasonably torrid rate for nearly 20 years. But here in Minnesota, I am learning a new rhythm, faster in June, slower in November. My prairie mentors are showing me the way: Sleep more, choose your daily goals wisely and understand that we can’t —shouldn’t — do it all.

We humans are more linked to the earth and its cycles than we’d like to admit. And while we’re not hibernating bears, we can take a cue from the first peoples who lived here. They hunkered down in winter in their earth lodges, telling stories by firelight and feasting on the fruits of labor done when the sun shone high over the horizon.

And this, truly, is something I can celebrate. In California, something is ripe and fresh nearly every month of the year. Here, we work hard to preserve the earth’s good things for the long winter — and we actually have the time to enjoy them! In California, I found myself never really getting to the pantry, the very full freezer…

November is when fall slides into winter. I am looking out my window at the season’s first snowfall, a sticky, chunky snow that may or may not stick — and if it does, it won’t for long. But its arrival signals the start of cozy season, where we do a thing, maybe two, then settle into the long night with friends, family, maybe an amiable stranger at the bar.

Or maybe do nothing. Solo, with a book. After all, it’s a long winter.