Giulia For me, slowness, better known as slow living, is reading books, listening to music with headphones on the sofa, dedicating time to my plants, and nourishing creativity by reading inspirational magazines. And again, writing without a purpose.
For a long time, as soon as I discovered the concept of slow living, I tried to make it as instagrammable as possible. Not because it had to be perfect in a photo grid, but because I got the idea that there was a pre-established list that I too had to stick to in order to talk about slow living.
It took me a long time to understand what I wanted to highlight and what was most valuable in my everyday life.
Of course, walking in the woods (to take one of the first examples that come to mind when I think of certain “slow living” situations) is an activity that I like, but it doesn’t fit into my everyday life, it simply can’t do it and the reason is simple: I live in the city and I like to live my life at my own pace.
For a long time, I said to myself “if only I lived near a forest I could do a whole series of things and that would be slow living”.
The reality, however, is that I live in the city, a city that I have come to love, and now I love walking through its streets. I, therefore, understood that slowness had to be shaped by my life, the things that recharge me and give me satisfaction.
I don’t have to measure slowness by looking at how long I can stay in the woods, but I have to measure it based on my everyday life.
So here is my slowing down over these last two weeks: I know, from previous years, that this is a period of slowness for me: first of all physically because in the heat I cannot function and I need more time to rest. Secondly, for the type of work I do, for which the busiest period is between September and March I use the summer months to prepare for autumn and winter. In the end mentally: I need to pull the brake and put a stop to certain things, to be able to make room for what really recharges me, for everyone it is different and it can also be different depending on the time of year. At the moment I’m leaving a lot of space for reading and walking around the city.
