Tag: self-development

Live With Your Head in the Clouds

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Today is perhaps not the best day to write about cloud appreciation because I am pretty glad there aren’t any to appreciate. This is the third day in a row of clear blue skies and I am absolutely revelling in it. It’s been cold and rainy and miserable and clouds are responsible for all that suffering, right? They’re the ones to blame, the ones to moan about and wish away. Isn’t that how we tend to think of them? That the days without clouds are the ones we should notice and appreciate?

Even on a gorgeous, clear day like today, as a new, card-carrying member of the Cloud Appreciation Society I have to wholeheartedly disagree.

Clouds are For Kids

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A great photo from http://bit.ly/13jG4h2.

When I was a kid, my favorite event was rain on a hot summer day. As a child, although I lived in a very hot place, as long as the sun was out I was out. Occasionally, the neighbour kids and I would be sitting in the driveway playing a game or eating a pile of candy, when one fluffy little cloud would pass over and tiny drops of rain would start to fall on us. Continue reading →

Slowness

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I’ve been running away from writing about what I really want to write about here, which is slowness. Partly, I find that I am not really able to explain what I mean by that when people ask about it. So I’ve been putting it off, and feeling awkward about it, and getting annoyed that I’m not writing about what I want to write about, and, well, I’m over it. I sat down today and thought about what it is I really mean by slowness and here’s the definition I decided I’m going with.

Slowness: the experience of allowing yourself not to be in a rush.

In practicing slowness, we can:

  • do our normal things more slowly, with more purpose and awareness
  • do inherently slow things that are not normal for us and might make us feel a little weird but, hey, we’re experimenting so it’s cool
  • do the slow things we really love to do, but that we don’t do because we think we need to be busy all the time doing big, serious, grown-up type things, or because we feel a little weird or judged when people see us doing it

all while being more open and willing to experience life more richly as a result.

That last one there is my own personal challenge – hence three weeks of not writing a post because I wanted to talk more specifically about slowness, but thought you might all think it’s just a little weird, and that I am just a little weird, and, well, that would be the end of that. You might still think it, but I can’t not write about it any more, so I’m going to just roll with it.

Slow = Excitement!

To get you excited about the idea of slowness, and hopefully deter you from the idea that slow=boring, here’s a sneak preview list of some things I will be writing about in the coming posts: Continue reading →