Slow and unsteady

When the word slow rolls off my tongue, I can’t help but feel it is a very weird word. Some words are like that for me. It makes me think of a sloth, slow and sleepy, dangling from a branch high above the Costa Rican rain forest. I was disappointed not to see one up close when we were there a couple years ago but apparently they don’t do much more than hang from the upper branches of very tall trees.  And surprisingly they are very good swimmers (though with how long it must take them to get to a body of water it would be a wonder they swim at all).

I seem to be channeling the slow sloth during these weeks of quarantine where I’m sort of just sitting around much of the time (or so it seems to me). Writing is a very passive activity, requiring me to sit my butt in a chair with breaks for coffee to keep me from drifting off. I wish I could say I was writing something meaningful or publishable but mostly it is just nonsense, processing the anxiety, boredom and the sameness of each day while trying to hang onto some semblance of sanity.

But sometimes slow is a good thing. People talk about now having time to do all the things they’ve thought of doing for years but never had the time: learning to cook, play an instrument, home improvements, decluttering, knitting, reading Ulysses. Not me. I haven’t taken up a new hobby or decided to tackle a big project over the past month. Just sitting here waiting for things to change and meanwhile my house is becoming more of a disaster each day as we are all home and the messes pile one on top of the other. Initially I tried to keep it at bay but soon gave up when I realized the piles were generating at a faster pace than my sloth-like behavior could handle. I dream of the day when things go back to a little closer to normal, whatever that may mean.

Tell me about any new hobbies or projects you’ve taken up during this slowing down time to offer the rest of us some inspiration. Or are you a sloth like me?

MC