On Slowness

There is a particular quality of attention that only emerges when you stop trying to be efficient. It arrives uninvited, like a cat settling into your lap — the moment you stop reaching for it.

The Cult of Speed

We live inside an acceleration. Not just of technology or commerce, but of expectation. Every notification is a small demand. Every unread message, a tiny debt. The modern inbox is less a tool than a treadmill, and we have confused movement with progress.

I don't mean to romanticize slowness as laziness. Slowness is not the absence of action — it's the presence of intention. It's the difference between reading a paragraph and scanning it, between cooking a meal and reheating one.

What Slowness Teaches

When I paint, the best hours are the ones where time becomes irrelevant. The brush finds its way not through planning but through patience. A color emerges not because I chose it, but because I waited long enough for the right one to appear.

The same principle holds in writing. The best sentences are rarely the first ones. They're the ones that arrive after you've sat with an idea long enough that it stops being an idea and starts being a feeling.

A Practice, Not a Philosophy

I'm not arguing for a slow life as a lifestyle brand. I'm arguing for occasional, deliberate slowness as a practice — a way of remembering that not everything needs to be optimized.

Sometimes the most productive thing you can do is stare out a window.

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This essay was originally written in a notebook, by hand, over the course of three weeks.