A Snail's Pace

Paying more attention to my natural speed.

I hate running. I have ever since I was a wee thing. In races at school I would push myself as hard as I could but it felt like sandbags were strapped to my legs. When I played on the basketball team, I was always the last one to get over the line, the last one to get a hand on the ball. In math class, I couldn’t comprehend what the teacher was doing with numbers so I was held back in remedial classes, where I was always the last one to finish the quizzes and to understand the homework.

Socially, I was slow to come out of my shell. We moved so often and I felt like I had to observe the landscape to understand how I was supposed to behave to fit in. Even now, I can be quite friendly and outgoing when I first meet people but it takes me years to really let people see the silly, weird side of myself that I feel like is the “true” me.

I’ve always taken a long time to make decisions. Everything needs to be carefully considered before any kind of action can be taken. I’ve always needed at least a half hour after the alarm goes off in the mornings to lay in bed before I can even think of sitting up. I naturally move at a snail’s pace.

But our culture has evolved to appreciate speed. We want fast food and fast service and instant gratification.

In the rat race, I’ve been in the back of the pack. When I signed up for college, I didn’t know what I wanted to major in. I picked art because I was good at it and because I felt like I would have to do very little math. (I’ll do anything to avoid math.)

When I graduated, I had no plan for my life. I knew I wanted to be an artist, but I had no idea how to do it. It has taken me 15 years to even begin to understand what it means to be an illustrator.

These last 15 years I have hated myself for being behind. I thought that by beating myself up it could make me go faster. The ol’ stick method.

But using the stick actually made me slower. Telling myself that I was lazy didn’t actually motivate me to get moving. Comparing myself to others made it feel like I was pouring quick-set cement over my feet.

It didn’t help when the social media algorithms changed. Now, it wasn’t enough just to post a picture of your artwork. Now, you needed to make videos. Now, you needed to respond to everyone and share their posts. You needed to post at least three times a week. Better if it is three times a day.

I just can’t keep that kind of pace. I don’t think I want to. I don’t think anyone actually does, but we have become trained to expect that of ourselves and of each other.

Look at these stunning snails!

I sense a shift happening in myself, where I am shaking myself off and asking why I am in such a hurry. My natural pace is a slow, steady one. Why am I always fighting against it? Why do I reject this part of myself? That slow pace allows ideas to simmer and bubble up unexpectedly. Pushing for the next idea “quick, quick, quick!” just clams me up. For a long time I’ve worried that this means that I will have fewer opportunities coming my way if I don’t hurry up. But when I am in a hurry, I don’t stop to appreciate what it is I actually have.

When I was little, I used to savour each of my experiences. Sure, I had the impatience of a child, but I remember always being awed by the way light played on surfaces. I remember really focusing on the sounds and textures around me and drinking them in. I remember being so sensually tuned into the world. Somewhere in my hurry, I stopped paying attention in that way. I became so internally focused on my shortcomings and how I had to play “catch up” that the world became dull and grey. And if everything is dull and grey, what is even the point?

If you are hanging out on instagram at all, you probably will have seen that Meta is planning to feed user’s content to their generative AI. For those in the US it seems like there really isn’t a way to opt out of this, from what I can see. So in reaction, a lot of artists are jumping ship to Cara or Bluesky. I have signed up for both platforms, but I have a feeling that AI scraping will eventually occur on these platforms as well. I think the generative AI thing is unfortunately here to stay and we are going to have to learn to work around it as best we can.

The frantic energy surrounding this jump has caused me to pause and ponder about how I want to spend my limited energy. I started making things because I loved the process of making my imaginative visions more concrete. I liked showing what my brain and hands came up with. Not so much for praise (I am experiencing complicated emotions about that too, that I might write about at a later date) but to sort of invite others to “play” with me in my imaginative space. I think this is what all creators do.

I’m not actually sure why I started writing this, other than to help myself to figure out my feelings around this. But I’m hoping that as you read this, you might also be asking yourself if you want to slow down, too. What can you notice about your life as it is? What can you cut out of your life? Where can you drop expectations?

What will slowing down reveal to you?

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Thanks for reading this bit of ramble if you made it all the way through. I appreciate your time and attention more than I can express. I’d love to hear if you have any thoughts about this topic. Even better, if you have any tips I’m all ears! (Or eyes, I guess).

Cheers,

-Jeanne