Pace and Plot

I’m slowing down for winter, and I can feel it. Some of this slowing is conscious, but not all of it. Much of it is animal instinct: the mornings quieter, the days shorter, the late afternoons darker, the evenings their own special blend of hush. I usually sleep close to exactly seven hours a night. That has, quite naturally, extended to eight, and sometimes longer.

I have mentioned on my This Week in Sound email list that if I don’t get an issue out, it’s because I’m deep in work on a book project, which is a methodical practice, quite different from the annotated clipping service, short thought pieces, and recommended listening that my Substack consists of. I recently recognized that a Slack dedicated to the Disquiet Junto was one element too many in the long-running community than I could dedicate back-burner mental time to, and I worked with members of the community to change the admin structure of the Slack so as to lessen my cognitive burden.

And there’s a funny thing about doing less: when you’re successful at it, you want to cull even more. So I wonder what else I can do less of. But I don’t wonder too much, because wondering likewise requires an allocation of time. Wondering can be reflective, but it can also be active, and active isn’t conducive to slowing one’s pace.

I see this slowing in various aspects of my day. I’m reading a bit more attentively, and I’m exercising for longer stretches, so to speak, going for even more and further walks — walking being my primary non-digital vice (though it is digitally adjacent, since I often have an earbud in one ear piping an audiobook). I’m also plotting: reengineering my work processes, tidying (atoms and bits), planning. Because to do less now is in service of doing more later, later being this coming calendar year.