Let's Be Honest, I Kind of Suck at Slowing Down

Back in July when this whole move came about I felt deeply in my gut that one of the main reasons I was being called to move to Bodega and live this way of life was to slow down and simplify so that I could really figure out who I am and what I am here for.

Well, almost three months in and I must confess. I kind of suck at the slow down.

On my drive to Encinitas this week I was deep in thought about how something just felt off. I’m not going to sugar coat it. The last two months have been hard. Transitions are never easy and I have no idea why I always think the next one I’ll just glide through it with absolutely no bumps, no questioning, no anything remotely emotional (Said the most emotional person in the world. Insert eye roll here). Now mind you, I don’t just go through small transitions. All mine are like, uproot and change every aspect so I feel totally unstable and ungrounded kind of transitions. And this one was definitely no different.

And I should have known better when I broke my foot and had a sudden relationship ending all within the span of three days a week before I moved that this one was probably going to take the cake. That life, something bigger, was pushing me out of the next. It was time to get really uncomfortable.

While at The Home Depot a week and a half before I left, I dropped a 4 ft by 8 ft sheet of plywood on my left food from about 2-3 feet up and watched it all happen in slow motion as I lost my grip and the wood came crashing down before I could get my food out of the way.

Then, three days later over dinner the guy I was seeing and I ‘accidentally’ broke things off. I’m serious. We were fully intending to continue exploring our relationship from a distance but I now see that that wouldn’t have worked for me. I still look back and think, WTF happened there?

THAT my friends, is a perfect example of how the Universe steps in because you aren’t doing the very thing you know you need to do. I knew he wasn’t right but he was a really amazing guy and there were SO many things about him that did feel right it was easier for me to not listen to that small voice in the back of my mind that was saying, “Nope. This is still not it but it’s close.”

So when I wasn’t icing and elevating my foot and trying to figure out why the hell my relationship ended out of nowhere, I was looking up into the heavens with a smirk saying, “Ok, ok! Jeez la weez! Pipe down up there I’m picking up what you are laying down already.

Let go and surrender.

But sometimes I don’t want to surrender. Sometimes, I really want to control every single aspect of my life until my insides are wound up so much that I explode like one of those creepy Jack In the Box’s because I can’t take the pressure any longer.

So I moved here with a broken foot and a super bruised heart and sat alone in a yurt in the middle of nowhere wondering what the fuck did I just do.

All the while in the back of my head I kept hearing a voice say, “Just slow down Amanda. It’s okay to slow down.”

So I tried. Some of it was unintentional because the emotional force of the transition had me literally paralyzed at times…with a broken foot. Other times I remembered that little voice in the back of my head and intentional tried to discern what slowing down even meant.

To be clear, that little voice in the back of my head is something we all have. It’s called our higher self, our intuition, our inner guidance. It’s the one that told me to move to Encinitas and also told me to buy a saw. It’s the one that told me to look on my ex-husbands computer and ultimately leave my marriage. It’s the one that says, “don’t go down that dark road.” The one that always guides me to my next thing and never leads me astray. And I remembered that about a year and a half ago, it started telling me to slow down and simplify my life.

Except, what I realized on my drive to Encinitas this past week was that I’m not exactly sure I even know what that means for me. And that I am really good at pretending I’m slowing down but in reality, I’m still just busying myself and my mind.

I also think it’s easy to look around and see other’s definitions and take bits and pieces of what they are doing and apply it to our own reality which in part is a way of figuring out what is true for you and I was doing that but something felt off.

Most of the time I think I’m slowing down but I’m really still doing. Like for example, I take Baker on walks and bring my phone and listen to music or a podcast. Sometimes that’s fine but mostly it’s just another distraction. Or I sit on my couch and work on macrame or weaving something on my new handmade loom while watching another episode of Scandal and I convince myself this is the slow down. And maybe for some people it is. But for me, something still fells off.

So on my drive to Encinitas I thought more about this. How the week leading up to this trip I was rushing and caught back in the hustle of getting it all done and I just kept thinking, I don’t like this feeling. I mean, I LOVED most of what I was doing. I was back to creating and just so in the flow but I also felt the old stories of validation from my business start to creep back up. Look at me I’m SO BUSY. I must be worthy now.

And I know very clearly I don’t want that existence. And I’m tempted to say that I know there will be times in life where the hustle is sometimes necessary but is it? Or is that just a deep seeded conditioning by society. Have we just been so programmed to believe that we really need to work hard to play harder? Do we really have to burn the candle at both ends to feel successful?

So today I’m back from my trip down to Encinitas where I was commissioned to make this barn door and I’m recommitted to understanding what the slow down truly means to me. And to understand this, I have to get quiet and really listen.

To be continued.