I had already woken up, by my standards, late. I was hoping to get a coffee shop morning in as I had a lot of writing and related projects that justified overpaying for soy milk. Nevertheless, eventually I was out the door and tiptoeing down the icy sidewalk, the aftermath of last night’s snowfall.
I arrived at the empty coffee shop and identified my corner table. It was quiet and cozy and the floor to ceiling windows looking out over the boulevard made it extra charming. Here, I was certain, I would fly through work. Shaking off the feeling of “being late to the day,” I opened my computer while the barista made my tea latte.
And with zero say at all in the thing, my computer began updating. My computer updated for 26 minutes. And for 26 minutes, I found myself struggling to maintain the peace and serenity and focus I’d promised the coffee shop would bring. You see, I had a lot of stuff I wanted to get done and this grueling 26 minute delay was exploding my brain and sense of efficiency.
Moreover, when I was filling my backpack with house keys and my laptop charger, I’d let my eyes pass over my notebook and my current fiction read. I didn’t need those. I was going to be computer-working. And twenty minutes later as I watched the update bar crawl across the bottom of my screen, all I could think about is where I’d left off in the story last night and all the notes I could be brain mapping onto my notebook.
Inhale exhale.
My brain jumped back to a few weeks ago, the last time we’d had a big snow. Historically, I love winter. My one complaint, I had relayed to my partner after an evening walk, was how I had to sometimes walk slower in the winter to avoid slipping on icy patches.
My brain jumped again. The night before the coffee shop, while running a stupid comedy bit at our apartment, I moved a little too quickly, slamming my thigh into the hard arm of our sofa and immediately hitting the ground with a muffled moan.
I am, it seems, not great at slowing down.
Later that night, as I was rubbing my still aching thigh and complaining about how “actually bad it still hurts,” my partner said, “okay we need to be better at slowing down.”
“We???”
Famously, one of us is calm. One of us is not. Famously, one of us is constantly banging into furniture from moving too quickly. One of us is patiently dealing with the consequences of bruised knees and stubbed toes.
“Yeah, I don’t know why I said ‘we.’ But I support you at moving more slowly.”
Every time the sidewalks are covered in snow, I try to think of it as a good thing. I am being forced to move more mindfully through the world around me. So hard as it may be for my million miles per hour brain to calm, perhaps it is a good thing when a computer does an unprompted update and forces me to be slow. Forces me to sit in an empty coffee shop with a fun drink and sip slowly. Forces me to not be able to be hyper productive and efficient at all hours.
It’s a lesson I am learning and relearning each day. But on snowy mornings with slow computers, I suppose deep down I do feel a little grateful for the added attention given to the walk around the block, the latte foam, and the gentle beating of my impatient-but-working-on-it heart.
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