Member-only story
Slow and Steady Always Wins The Race
A native New Yorker’s dilemma
I was raised with the go, go, go type of upbringing. Everything was done quickly, and somehow we were always in a rush and running late. The best was never good enough because there was still more that could have been done. After many years of rushing through life, I one day realized I didn’t want to do that anymore.
It’s weird because I never saw anything wrong with rushing around and doing everything as fast as I possibly could. I was accustomed to doing things as fast as humanly possible, and I learned to enjoy it in some aspects. It made me feel productive and worthy of life. If I could do things fast, I was competent…or so I thought.
As you could imagine, I had zero patience and would be filled with crippling anxiety over a slow driver in front of me or a minor inconvenience that wasted my sweet time.
It was a really chaotic and honestly pathetic way to live. Maybe I shouldn’t say “was” so confidently. Remnants of the lifestyle still plague me every day. My biggest fear is time — I feel like it’s always against me.
I have come a long way, truly, in realizing that it’s okay to slow down. And I have come to realize with practice that it is more sustainable, too.
