lessons from the weekend i slowed down
and one heavy truth that's always hard for me to swallow
Life as of late has been, um, interesting. I could count and name the ways but I’m sure, dear reader, you can conjure a slew of situations - work, health, family, mental, and otherwise - to understand what I mean when I say interesting. As I sat at my desk last Friday with a cup of tea and finally exhaled the weight of the last few weeks from my shoulders, I realized that I was deeply yearning for some semblance of calm. More specifically, internal calm.
At this point in time, that’s proven a bit difficult for me to nail down and actually stick to. Everything feels like it’s in flux right now, and I’m struggling with balancing and neutralizing its impact on my internal state. One of my tarot spreads last week was comprised of cards entirely from the swords suit and if you’re unfamiliar with that minor arcana family, it basically gave it to me straight: you’re self-sabotaging; get out of your head and into your body.
…Right-o, tarot deck! Spreads like this tend to stick with me, and I spent a chunk of the week thinking about it and - of course, me being me - how best to incorporate the wisdom into my daily life1. I started with asking questions like, what areas of my day need the most attention? What’s a habit or tendency that brings more instability than it reasonably should? Are there specific things that ground me or let me enter into a state of calm and if so, where can those be welcomed into my day?
After a couple days assessing what is and isn’t working right now, I came up with a list of things that will hopefully slow me the heck down and bring some serenity to my mind, heart, gut, and nervous system.
the ground rules
Be selective about what deserves my attention first thing in the morning and as the last thing in the evening
Monitor and limit caffeine intake outside of my morning coffee; this - can you believe it? - doesn’t make me slow down!
In the same vein, keep an eye on sodium intake to avoid a blood pressure episode
Spend time outside with the breeze, soil, and birdsong
Move my body in some way for a couple hours, whether that’s going for a long walk, cleaning up the garage, or tending to the garden
Consume food that makes my body feel nourished and not aggravated (see the bits about caffeine and salt above)
Embrace the silent moments of the day and if silence isn’t an option, listen to a favorite ambiance video or classical or soft jazz playlist to enter into a similar state of mind
Limit scrolling screen time to 45 minutes or less per day
Create - write, sketch, or paint - without distractions (see this post for insight on how I enter the creative process)
I love knowing that I have some figurative training wheels to guide me until I’m ready to peel out of the driveway, so I’m feelin’ good about this. Let the weekend commence!
saturday
I always feel like I can do the most on Saturdays. I have an entire day to recover, right? Instead of hoping straight into my gardening list, we eased into the day with a 1-mile walk around our favorite local park and stopped by our go-to bakery in town for breakfast. We’ve gotten into a habit of grabbing our food to-go but this morning, we dined outside and listened to the hums of the city gearing up for the first official day of spring break. I’ve developed an affinity for sipping my morning coffee (and only caffeine of the day, I might add!) in the shade of the bakery, so much so that it’s become one of the small, simple pleasures of my weekends. It slows me down and opens my senses. The only things to distract me are the friendly hellos from passerby and the gentle breeze winding through the streets. It’s an experience to be savored, every time.
“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.” - W.B Yeats
After breakfast, I swung into a shop across the street to browse and found a painting that was too stunning to leave behind. Eventually, I’ll get around to assembling a gallery wall but for now, it’ll be admired from the comforts of my desk.
I then hopped into my weekend routine of picking things up around the house, vacuuming, and cleaning the bathrooms. I used to drag my feet with these tasks but these days, I find comfort in the familiarity of them. I finished up my housework after lighting a candle and opening the windows, and few things make me slow down than watching our cats quietly take in the wonder of the outdoors.
Shortly after, I changed into my gardening clothes and slipped on my gloves with the warm noon sun overhead. Last weekend was a beast of a planting weekend so I felt like I could really slow down today. I planted seven new plants - barbecue rosemary, delphinium, Turk’s cap, and autumn sage - and transplanted four Mexican feather grasses and a bundle of society garlic from our other garden beds into our newer beds int he backyard. It was work but it was good work. Getting my hands in the dirt with birdsong as the soundtrack is a different kind of therapy.
We ended the day at our favorite Tex-Mex restaurant and even though it was busy, that gave us time to extra time to get lost in conversation over chips and salsa. Sure, it wasn’t the most nourishing meal but it was so good and that’s really all you need after a long day in the garden. With full bellies, we arrived home and tuckered in early to give our bodies some much-needed rest to get ahead of the dreaded time change.
sunday
I woke up groggy and stiff on Sunday, which wasn’t much of a surprise but still left me feeling like I woke up on the wrong side of the bed. That headspace slowly dissolved throughout the hour I spent waking up, which I think was largely a side effect of my delicious morning coffee. I’ve only recently realized the magic of coconut milk in an iced latte and I’m entirely enamored with it. The joy of those first sips is unmatched.
I lit my candles, refilled the water in my new Yeti (it’s chartreuse - squee!), and sat down at my computer to do a bit of writing. The consistent practice of stringing words together has served as encouragement to slow down and move at the pace of the process. It’s not often a quick and easy task and while I was a bit uncomfortable with that fact at first, it’s grown on me as something to patiently sit with and have the words work through me and not the other way around.
By the early afternoon, I was feeling a bit restless. My husband made us some ramen that was delicious but ended up being a lil’ too salty and I felt it, but that didn’t keep me from finishing up some tasks in the garden.
A meteor hit my internal speedometer in the early evening and everything kind of spiraled after that. I was incredibly angry, anxious, and upset about something that occurred, which was such a change of pace from the rest of my relatively smooth and calming weekend. It was emotional and physical whiplash in every sense of the word. I hate being bombarded with those feelings because I experience them so strongly but it is what it is and in moments like that, I can only focus on what’s in my control.
lessons learned
Sipping coffee at a bakery or cafe with nothing else to steal my attention is just the best and something I want to start doing more of on my weekends.
I realized while transplanting the grasses that I actually didn’t know if I was doing it correctly. I didn’t research the ins-and-outs beforehand (very unlike me) and was just kind of assuming that I knew how to do it. I had a moment of panic that I might damage or kill the plants but at that point in the process, I slowed my racing mind and told myself that it’ll be fine, these plants are pretty tough, and I can always replace them if they do bite the dust. I sought out to slow my body this weekend but I often forget that my mind is part of that system. It means well most of the time but sometimes I just need to silence the overthinking - as my tarot spread already told me - and leap with the knowledge that I’m also a problem-solver and can figure it out if things turn out differently. What a freeing thing to realize.
The quiet that comes from not scrolling on social media is something I treasured this weekend. I think I have a fairly healthy relationship with social media and I don’t think scrolling is inherently bad, especially when your feed is comprised of content that makes you feel good in one way or another. But just taking a break from the onslaught of information and memes and inspiration was a welcome reprieve and an invitation to look past the screen to find all of that already existing in front of me.
Slowing down is a choice and getting out of my head is a choice. Both are also products of understanding what is and isn’t in my control. Of my almost 30 years on this big, beautiful planet, this is still the hardest lesson for me to swallow and one that I only begin to recognize when it starts eating me apart from the inside out. I was able to do the things that I wanted to do at a more relaxed pace this weekend because I chose to move in that way. It was in my control and my control alone, and no one or nothing was telling me otherwise. There’s a sense of autonomy to claim in that recognition and although I see how freeing it can be, it’s one lesson that I know I’ll be revisiting over and over again throughout my life. You know what they say: old habits die hard.
And that’s where I leave y’all today! I didn’t know what this post would look like or how it would conclude, but it was certainly one that evolved with the passing hours and I’m so grateful that I welcomed the idea with curiosity instead of passing it off as silly or uninteresting. There’s always so much to learn when I take the time to move and think and feel at a healthy but reduced pace, and I would like to be more conscientious of that when I can.
Do you also find yourself in this position at times, and are there specific things you turn to for slowing down? Do you, like moi, also grapple with needing to have some sense of control over every little stinkin’ thing? If you’re comfortable doing so, leave me a comment and let me know. As always, thanks so much for reading. I appreciate y’all!
‘Til next time,
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This is one of the reasons I love turning to my tarot deck; it encourages inward reflection and deeper thinking about the happenings of one’s life. I will never know all the answers but I’m content with just having the resulting understanding and self-awareness that my tarot deck can bring.
beautifully written🫶 since 2020, I’ve found that playing in my journal brings me calm and allows me to be creative. sometimes i’ll spend a couple hours in it and finally lift my head up realizing i should probably take a break😅 but getting lost in updating trackers, creating new spreads, writing, back-journaling, etc. has become one of my favorite hobbies and just brings me so much peace and calm.