Rubbing shoulders with the concept of slowing down – Moni

To be honest, time never really was my best friend. The sassy little thing can go by extremely slow sometimes and on other occasions it makes me be like: Usain who?

After high school I went to uni, worked in a café, wrote articles for online magazines as an intern, graduated, started to work full time, carried on freelance writing, started another uni with distance learning, changed job, graduated again, changed job again and always maintained an active social life. So basically I know how to be busy, but with the contrary…Houston, I have a problem.

I try to work on this inner pressure to always do someting and there are periods when I’m pretty successful with the mission, but other times things slip through my fingers. As every other person on the planet, last year I was forced to turn down the speed and use quarantine to reframe what does productivity mean. Losing my job wasn’t easy as it pushed me even deeper in the big black hole of (free)time.

I decided to be a volunteer for a year because it gives an opportunity to keep redefine what career, values or work itself mean to me and the siesta filled, “no rush” Spanish timezone challenges my relation with taking it easy.

The last 5 months was a wild ride in slow motion. Getting used to work 25-30 hours a week in crazy shifts (instead of the classic 9-5 system), letting go the “tourist drive” and not go to the beach or sightseeing everyday, finding the beauty in the kids repeating one song over and over again and understand the importance of afternoon powernaps.

Although July was pretty intense with the summer school, August is stepping in as my spiritual leader of chill out. The youth center will be closed, my flatmate is out of town, and I’m very excited to see how this month will turn out.