Life is funny, it seems to always get busy during every season. In the summer life gets so slammed with BBQs, days at the lake, and always a handful of weddings. Then fall comes around and we are still busy, telling ourselves it will slow down in the winter. You say, "At least we still have the free weekends in the winter." Well life happens and you make plans for a weekend away, spend the day shoveling the two feet of snow, or you had plans and cannot leave because the roads are covered in ice. When spring finally starts to show you book all your free time doing the things you missed in the winter... and then it's summer again. This happens year after year...after year. When does life slow down? Why is our pace a mile a minute?

While in school I felt like I never had time to do anything. My life was this never-ending cycle of stressors. Never allowing me to slow down and enjoy the seasons life brought me. Until I had to make a change and develop hobbies that slowed my pace and allowed me to be me again. Developing slow hobbies has gifted me the ability to take time for myself, something many people do not do enough of.

Slow hobbies include numerous things. These are just a few I have picked up.

1. Cooking or Baking

Salmon Burger topped with an avocado spread

Now I don't just mean making a grilled cheese. I mean making something that requires time, effort, and multiple steps. First, the preparation. I love mincing garlic and still hate cutting an onion. I love stirring the sauces, roasting vegetables, and adding this to that. Sometimes a meal takes all day, we live in a world where thirty-minute dinner recipes are all the rave. I prefer the older way, slow home cooking. I really learned this skill in California working in a household with a cook. She showed me how to balance preparing multiple dishes at a time. Preparing dishes that needed to be marinated, cooked on the stove, then baked in the oven. Dishes like those took hours to finish, but would never taste the same had I skimped on the small details. Cooking requires more then throwing things in a pan, it requires patience, a skill I developed more by having slow hobbies like this.

2. Embroidery

I am not a huge artsy fartsy person, but I definitely have my moments. I feel like sometimes I get into spells where I just want to create. Having Pinterest is great in that I get Ideas, but I then just compare my final to the original and almost cry. That was until I found embroidery. I may not be winning any awards for my work anytime soon but it is an art outlet I feel good at. The nice thing about embordering is you can set it down and start up again when you need to. Creating a design takes a long time. There have been multiple times I have a few stitches completed and then end up cutting all the knots to start over again. That is what life is, sometimes life is hard and takes multiple tries. Things are hard and you try your best, sometimes beautiful things just take longer to create than others. That is the whole point of slow hobbies. Finding something that takes time, energy, and makes you feel good. I have never loved my artwork. However, I do love the embroidery I've made, because I know each stitch has so much detail. What if we looked at life that way? Instead of looking at the whole day, week, or year, we took the time and remembered the little, mundane, details life hands us.

3. Taking the Long Way Home

My drive takes me twenty two minutes if I go on the interstate. However, I choose to add an extra five minutes to my drive just to slow my speed, literally. I drive past farmhouses and corn fields dreaming about what life might be like in just a few years. I have been watching the trees change into the brightest and deepest colors you can imagine. Now that it's winter I see the white snow and it looks as if it is glitter. The country side is a beautiful painting that is ever changing with the season, much like life. Each day is something new and beautiful. While driving I think about what the day will bring or the blessings it has already given me. Those five extra minutes of slowing myself down allows me to dream, breathe, and relax. At the end of the day I never regret taking the slow way home.

Slowing down has helped me realize my life is taking the path laid out for me. Life presents crazy fast twists and turns but having slow hobbies like those above keep me grounded. I hope to challenge everyone to find what they enjoy and dedicate themselves to their own slow hobbies, no matter the time commitment. Make these hobbies some of your top priorities because while the world never slows down, you can.