Above all, my ‘need for slow’ is put to the test when trying to master the art of translating thoughts and ideas into the written word. This makes for fun study time. I cringe at the thought of even writing a cover letter, let alone a 10,000 word dissertation. This is partly because I am a self-confessed speedthinkaholic.
So, what better place to chip away at this problem than through writing blogs on Slow Planet!

As an speedthinker, I had just a few hundred thoughts up my sleeve that I was dying to share on Slow Planet.

Instead, please let me introduce to you a potent theme that has run through them all:

How I Kill my Literary Tortoise:
Stage One: Expectations.  “It has to be perfect!”
Stage Two: Limitations. “It has to be done by 10 o clock!”
Stage Three: Obligations. “It has to be brown, square, dull, blegh..”*clicks on facebook*
Result: Overwhelmed Overthinker.

To illustrate, here’s batch of over-thinking, fresh from the oven:

Blog: I have to find that perfect niche! The slow movement is so INTRINSIC to my DEEPEST convictions.. where to even BEGIN! OK.. lets start thinking about it shall we..steady…steady..
With a million intertwined ideas screaming for further investigation, finding one shining beacon worth reflecting on is overwhelming. My mind is RACING with SLOWNESS! - I’ve successfully achieved stage one. Tick!

“But, alas, I must write SOMETHING! “

Deadline: It has to be done by 10 o clock!  Smart thinking Elise. That way I’ll be SURE to spew something out there! Fantastic. I’m in stage two. The nasty ‘O’ word (obli-*choke*) has caste its spell on the task at hand and I find myself embracing a world of..
Dullification: Checkmate. It’s an obligation. ‘It has to be done by 10! ‘ ‘I am limited to one topic!’ My mind loves to create obligations and starts thinking up a whole bunch of others to keep the original ones company. Ironically, I end up wondering why writing a blog on slow is proving tedious while a million thoughts race through my head. Blogging becomes that square, brown, dull box. My literary tortoise is sick.

Feeding my Literary Tortoise:
Cutting some slack:  Sometimes the best way the take something seriously is to laugh at just how seriously I am taking it. Humour acts as a match maker between serious idealism and creative spontaneity!

Ditching obligations: Not ignoring a deadline. But whenever possible, doing what I feel capable of doing, allowing my engagement in the project at hand to dictate how much time will be appropriate for its completion, rather than a clock on the wall. I sometimes write a list FULL of plans, making sure to include deadlines for them ALL. I then scrap the list and do what feels best. It helps me to see the humour in how tightly time has me wrapped around its little finger. Often, my day becomes more productive.

Just do it: Just do it.

That said, I look forward to looking forward to posting again,
Slowly does it!

i find that rushing is adrenaline. it is an addiction! although it gets me to class on time or gets me first place the satisfaction is brief. going slow on a tests gets me a higher grade, taking my time on the tread mill gets me in shape more effectively there are just so many good things that come out of slowing down. i find that it is hard for me to slow down because along with speeding up comes great Inpatients. I only hope that i grow into a patient being in the future. i almost fee trapped.

Many of us have distanced ourselves from nature, but quite a few of us would rather move in the opposite direction. The vision of a slow decade is an attempt to start this process of co-evolutionary or, if you prefer, co-revolutionary change. If we are to survive on this beautiful planet, we have to learn to live with nature, or, at least, to cultivate a deep sense of belonging to its ecosystems and bioregions.

In a time when the politics of economic growth have gone bankrupt, nature offers us a model for a less rootless and less restless way of living. From nature we can learn to live in a slower pace, and to meet our needs with less resources than we thought was possible. Nature invites us to its zero-growth community. If we are prepared to listen, it helps us to develop sustainable practices and sustainable societies.

To those who dispute the need of a radically different alternative, I would like to quote David Harvey: “Compound growth for ever is not possible and the troubles that have beset the world these last thirty years signal that a limit is looming to continuous capital accumulation that cannot be transcended except by creating fictions that cannot last.”

Happy Slow Decade!

Today marks the true start of the Slow Book Tour.  I knew walking to my local library, with 20 books on my back, would be no problem.  It’s only 2 miles away.  But then my old friend Devin needed help with a fundraising drive for his nature camp.  They would be perched on the side of the opposite mountain, about 3 miles away, and a thousand feet up.  Kal and I had to stick to the roads due to hunting season.  Took the walk SLOW.  Stopped for views, and to contemplate old Shaker barns.  Stuffed envelopes for a few hours, then shouldered up the pack for the 2 mile stroll down the long dirt road into the town of New Lebanon.  The reading at the library was an intimate affair.  A success, for sure.  Then another 2 miles home late in the evening, with a final climb up the steep Spring Hill Road to get to the house.  22 books are much heavier than I thought!  Sold 5 at the library, which cut down on the weight a bit.  Either way, today I am sore.  Either way, I am now more convinced than ever that WALKING is the foundation of all things SLOW.

Today at 3pm EST in the US, I’ll be doing a live webcam chat with Arianna Huffington about the Slow revolution. Log in, ask questions, disagree, make suggestions, laugh at the funny side of fast and slow.

See you there!

Just click http://tiny.cc/XjrSp….

I have practiced the art of slow living a few years now, and it has profoundly changed my life. By defining myself as slow, I have intentionally turned my life into a laboratory of slow thinking and slow practices.

It all began when I became aware that there was a movement called ’slow food’. Could something really be termed ’slow’ and still be something positive? It was like pushing an orange button, and all of a sudden I remembered my early childhood, a brief period when I used to ponder on my own in a place of my own. Old memories can be dangerous, and these were. Within a few weeks, I realized that I had always been a slow and reflecting person, but never had explored this hidden side of my personality.

As soon as the seal was broken, it seemed impossible to stop the flow, impossible to leave the slow path. It was indeed possible to live differently, but my awakening also raised a number of difficult questions: How many more were suffering from fast living diseases? Was it a structural problem? What was at stake?

Some years have gone now, and it has become more and more obvious to me that slow living has everything to do with ecological living. A slow movement without an ecological dimension is like a plant without soil or a fish without water.

It has also become clear that we have to cooperate, if we are to change the planetary conditions. Concerted slow actions at all geographical levels are badly needed, but we also need a new time concept. Slow Days and Slow Weeks are great initiatives, but deep-seated changes demand a Slow Decade. Why not rename the coming decade that begins in just a few weeks? The planetary ecosystems will not heal in ten years, but ten years will hopefully be enough time to establish a slow and reflective mode of thinking in every corner of the world.

There is nothing more Slow than a sleeping dog after a long walk in the fall woods. I’ve had Kal, a border collie and husky blend of cuteness, for less than a week, but he’s already changed my life. For the better. He enhances the good things in life - eating, sleeping, walking, reading, building a woodstove fire, late afternoon cups of coffee.  He slows all these activities down for me, because he is a part of them now.  Through a kind of osmosis I pick up on his version of time, a deep, primal place of living, earthy and canine and pure.  I spent the past three years without a dog by my side, after spending seven years with the best dog a man could ask for.  I needed to wait those three years.  But only this last week have I realized I was more dead than alive during this dogless stretch of time.  And, of course, I was doing all the best things too fast.