Learning to Find the Slow in the Fast
My default speed is fast. I walk fast, talk fast, and learn fast. When a neurological assessment uncovered that my brain’s processing speed is in the 99.6th percentile, all of my speediness made sense. What didn’t make sense was the psychologist who administered the test concluded that I’m just a “naturally anxious” person and there was nothing they could do to help me. Since I didn’t accept that, I set out to figure out the nuances of how my brain works so I could not only work through my challenges but also double down on my strengths.
In relation to being an artist, this inherent speediness helps make pivoting when things aren’t working a bit easier. However the speed also tries to convince me that I need to pivot when things aren’t working fast enough. If you asked me what amount of time I would consider to be fast enough, I couldn’t tell you. It’s like my brain has a catalog for how long it takes most people to do things but won’t share it with me. When I work at a speed that it finds acceptable, it’s quiet. When something is difficult or time consuming, it’s very loud that I’m not working at the speed everyone else is. There’s no controlling it, there’s just finding tools to work around it. This makes building a solid business foundation difficult because I’m always feeling like I’m falling behind, even when I’ve just started. I tend to want to skip steps and move faster and that leaves me with a shaky foundation.
Thankfully my therapist has somewhat morphed into my career counselor as they were a writer before they became a therapist and therefore understand the difficulties of having a creative career. Recently when they posed the questions “Why should I care about what you’re making?” and “How does it benefit me?” in a purposefully mildly confrontational manner, I became completely frozen.
We talked the feeling through and I shrunk at these questions because I’m not connected to MY why. Why do I care about what I’m making? How do I feel it may benefit others? If I know why I care and what I feel then I can easily explain to others what I wish for them to experience when viewing my work. It wasn’t the confrontational tone that made me freeze, it was not knowing how I felt. The difficult part is giving myself grace that while this all seems very rudimentary, it’s not for me. My neurodivergence and being largely disconnected from my own feelings for most of my life has meant that those are VERY hard questions, which is why for most of my career I’ve avoided them.
Part of positive disintegration (the namesake of this newsletter), is determining who you want to be in the world and what your values are, then aligning your actions accordingly. While I’ve done that on a personal level, I have yet to do it professionally. It’s the piece that’s been missing and why I feel like things have been on shaky ground since last September. When I needed to pivot, I quickly made a list of all the things I could do, quickly chose a direction, quickly started learning…but slowly realized that quick wasn’t the speed I needed to be going. It’s taken me 4 months since I came up with the mandala project to realize I need to slow down and stop falling into the same old speed traps. (Pun intended.)
That brings me to answering the questions.
Why do I care about what I’m making?
I care about what I’m making because I care about the wellbeing of our society. Our relationship to work has become unhealthy because our survival depends on it. People are working long hours or multiple jobs in order to barely make ends meet. While I can’t directly change our entire system, I’m not completely powerless. I can create art that helps people rest. Rest is resistance.
How do I feel it may benefit others?
We can be so amped up from our busy schedules and fast paced environments that it can be hard to wind down without some guidance. If you’re neurodivergent, that adds another layer of complexity as focus can be difficult. There aren’t many places in our digital world that aren’t deliberately trying to stress us out in order to keep us scrolling. I wanted to make our digital world better by creating something that is removed from that stress. The mandala meditations reflect the symmetry and spirituality of nature, providing a peaceful focal point that guides you to a small oasis of relaxation. My aim is to help foster a deeper connection with the beauty and wonder that surrounds us in order to give us energy to navigate the chaos of our daily lives as well as further our compassion for others. More peace and compassion in ourselves not only benefits our personal health and well-being, it benefits our families, communities, and society as a whole.
My latest meditation, 3 Minutes of Positive Energy, is up on YouTube! As I’m still experimenting with different techniques, this animation is more dimensional. It definitely gave me a little bit of a challenge as I worked on improving the pacing of the movement.
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Until the next newsletter, be well!
Giesla
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