Slow Mornings

A little house tour along with some thoughts about the beauty of being intentionally slow.

Music credit: Bon Iver - Holocene

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Mornings are slow. Sometimes intentionally and sometimes stressfully.

Sometimes it takes me half an hour to make a cup of coffee because I get distracted between each step. 

Boil water. Check email. Clean the pour over strainer. Read a newsletter. Grind beans. Pour water. Pick up laundry. Add some honey. Forget the cup on the counter for ten minutes while I find a podcast for later in the day.

Sometimes I can embrace the slowness of mornings. Late sleepins for overtired bodies. Kiddos watching Youtube until 11am to feed their hungry brains when I don't have the focus or attention to give them.

Sip that coffee til it's stone cold.

Some mornings my to-do list barks at me from when it sits open on the bar top. "Check me. Check things off", it says. "You're taking too long to get going. You'll never have a productive day at this rate."

This is the funny thing about checking out of the rat race: it's still embedded in there, but when you don't have 9-5 commitments, it opens up the day. There are many minutes, many hours, in which to accomplish the things that need to get done. If the coffee doesn't get started until 10am, that's okay. If we don't do groceries until 3pm, that's okay too. If we're reviewing science and math concepts at 10pm, well, that's just perfect. 

We're operating on our own schedule now (with an obvious nod to everyone else's 9-5) and we can decide when to accomplish what task. The "early bird gets the worm" mantra is still part of my cultural consciousness, but it's not one I'm passing on to my children.