Slow and Sweet Like Candy
Hellooooo from Substack. The new home of Creative Burst, Kim Arin Coaching’s monthly newsletter. I’ll be posting the same content here, but if you’d like to become a first line reader (i.e. get it in your in box as soon as I post), I suggest you subscribe (use the link and give me your email and that’s it. Simple. Just the way I like it.)
GOING SLOW
I have settled into my bones. I don’t know how to better describe it other than I no longer feel itchy to move. If I make a plan, I really have to want to do it, and that’s a brand new thing for me.
In fact, I’ve changed so much that I was recently honored to receive a partial fellowship to a writing program in Martha’s Vinyard in June (Yes, humble brag. Ew. I hate me too). It was a huge honor, and normally the pride of being acknowledged would have been enough to make me do it, but after some serious contemplation, and sitting with the idea of being on a remote, hard to get to island during such a busy time in June, when I could be in my comfortable home with my cute kids and cat instead, I said no.
Believe me, Kim from three years ago was as shocked as anyone that I would make this call, but when I got real with myself, there was no compelling reason to go other than my super ego telling me I had to. It sounded like:
“Kim, they gave you money to write. You HAVE to go, even if you will feel stretched beyond your capacity! Even if it feels kind of out of alignment with your current goals, you HAVE to do it!”
HAVE to do it has driven me to make so many decisions in the past, and I’ve come to a point where I am only making decisions that live in the realm of WANT to.
As many of you know, the last few years have felt like a rollercoaster. I’ve been through a lot of change in a short amount of time, and I’ve come out of the experience a transformed person.
Call it age, wisdom, transformation, perimenopause, what you will, I’m the most comfortable in my skin that I’ve ever been. I know who I am, so as a result I try way less hard than I used to. I used to try so hard, that at the end of the day even my skin would feel tired from all the trying I had done. It’s such a big revelation for me to try less that I told my therapist that “I don’t even know how to try hard anymore”, and she literally said, “I think our work here is done” and fired me. Like literally, I graduated from therapy.
For context, I spent my marriage looking for ways to leave. Work trips, girls trips, adventure, solo trips, etc. If there was ever a reason to be gone, I took it. I can’t say that this was a result of the marriage being unhappy, though that didn’t help.
It was a survival adaptation I learned as a kid in order to get what I wanted or needed. I learned to look elsewhere, and to look outside of myself for satisfaction, always believing that if I just got to go to that special place, or see that special show, or do that special thing, then and ONLY then, would I feel complete. It created a cycle of me trying to prove myself and my worth by all of the badges of completion I was able to hang on my Girl Scout sash of life.
Now, the only badge I’m focused on is getting is the one that says “Sitting still”.
I’m still trying to crack the code of what it means to be still with my thoughts without taking action. I am learning to be truly present for the people who are right here with me - my kids, my boyfriend, my friends, my family, my clients. I am keeping my world intentionally close and small, and that is such an unnatural thing for me to do. I naturally long for the adventure, and so I am treating this exploration of stillness like an adventure of it’s own kind.
How am I exploring stillness? In a few ways:
I say “no” way more
I stay home way more
I meditate when I can / remember
I maintain a routine at the gym
I only eat when I’m hungry
I hang with my cat
I create meaningful time - couch cuddles, dinner at the table and time without phones - with the people I love dearly
I make art regularly
It’s so freaking boring, but I don’t feel bored. It’s also only hard when my brain gets in the way.
I’m rolling these new simple activities that I once took for granted around in my mouth like an Everlasting Gobstopper. I’m treating it like a piece of sweet candy that changes flavor, but never dissipates. Slowness has piqued my curiosity for the moment, and I never imagined that I would have ever evolved to become this subtle of a human.
In a world where it seems like the flashier and more present you are to everyone, the more successful you will be, my mind can play tricks on me. It tells me that I should be bigger. Try harder. Say more. Do more. What I’ve come to learn is that the dance of more is an illusion which is mostly played out these days in Social Media, and it doesn’t actually move the needle any further for you than if you are sitting in your authentic truth.
I am going to take my time with this new slow dissolving candy. I may never finish it at the pace I am going, and frankly, that feels totally right for right now.
xo
Kim