Savoring slowness and substance

Don't mind me...I'm just admiring the alliteration.

Jan 18, 2024

Hey, friend, before we dive in, how are you holding up? Still hanging in there?

It’s okay if you’re not. And if I’m being vulnerable, I haven’t been living my best life the last few weeks (the last month) because seasonal depression hit pretty hard and things piled up.

But I’m slowly emerging from it, and if you’re also treading water, I hope you'll emerge soon too.

As I’m coming up for air, I’m observing everything around me (and by that, I mean the online world because it’s too cold to exist outside right now 😹), and honestly, it’s like every other January.

Everyone is infatuated with productivity, discipline, and their goals. They’re romanticizing the hustle. They’re determined to make this year Their Year and do all the things and achieve all their goals.

There’s this sense of FASTNESS.

And, if you’re in the northern hemisphere like me, it’s still the middle of winter when the world — the natural world, nature — is still in deep rest.

(The fact that our late-stage capitalist society forces us to ignore and dismiss our innate urges to live a cyclical life in harmony with nature is a whole different, but still important, conversation.)

Have you noticed that everyone seems to be rushing along in life right now? How if you go on YouTube, most of the entrepreneurship videos you see right now are about how to be more productive (or how big creators are quitting).

It’s like after reflecting on last year and realizing that maybe it didn’t go as well as they wanted, they’re determined to make up for it and “catch up” all in January. As if doing 12 months of work in 1 month is even possible (or healthy).

There’s a feeling of frenetic rushiness — and it’s entirely unsustainable.

Normally, I’d be caught in the whirlwind of the new year too. I’d make these big plans, create action maps, and dive head-first in work to be the workiest worker that ever worked — ultra productive and efficient; the Borg Queen would be proud. And I’d normally burn out sometime in mid-March and coast the rest of the year until around October when I realize that yet another year is about to pass us by and I don’t have enough to show for it, so I use that end-of-year panic to jumpstart my system, only to repeat the cycle.

(Talk about vulnerability 😹)

Maybe it’s the accident and my body is still screaming at me to rest and heal and reminding me with little whispers “there’s still time,” but I’m feeling called to completely revolutionize how to spend my time — both my work and rest time.

Instead of rushing around and constantly distracting myself with the newest show (or binge-watching an entire season of DS9 in one night for the thousandth time lol), to live slowly.

To choose activities away from the screen. To read. To crochet. To paint. To play music. To simply exist without needing to do anything.

Instead of consuming two-second ideas that sound good on the surface but have very little resonance/stickiness, consuming (and creating) content with substance.

To read articles. To listen to podcasts. To have conversations about big ideas.

And these have prompted me to re-evaluate how I show up in my business and online.

If you’ve been here for a while, you know short-form isn’t in my vocabulary and I tend to write pretty long posts (to put it nicely 🙂). I like to fully explore a thought from multiple angles and really think about it. Not just “oh, this is an interesting thought; okay, time to move on,” but I like to sit with things and let them sink in.

Allow them to affect and change me.

And in a world with Twitter and TikTok — bite-sized information that looks good on the surface but has no or little substance (or context) because that’s not what these platforms are designed to do — the amount of content (information, ideas) we’re consuming on a daily basis is truly staggering.

It’s genuinely making my head hurt right now trying to conceptualize it.

We spend countless hours of our life consuming countless bits of information all designed to release more and more dopamine to keep us hooked.

But I’m craving something different.

I’m craving SUBSTANCE. MEANING. DEPTH.

And, honestly, we can’t cram that in a tweet or even a Facebook post.

Not when people are on there quickly scrolling for the next rush, always searching for MORE.

And I used to be one of these people, until it became too much, and now I log on to these platforms and feel drained — like my body is literally rejecting the onslaught of ideas flying at me without giving me time to process any of them.

This Substack was created with one concept in mind: to build a thriving business off social media in a sustainable, practical way.

And since I’ve created it, it’s becoming more apparent to me each day that this is truly the only sustainable way for me to thrive as a creator and service provider. It might be different for you, and that’s okay.

There is no one superior way to do anything in life.

But if you’re like me — if you like to sit, observe, think, reflect, and process — this is your nudge to examine your relationship with social media and notice how it makes you feel in your body and mind.

With all this, I decided to stop following all the “industry best practices” and start following “Cat’s best practices,” and this is what it looks like for me, for now:

prioritizing writing long-form articles ↝ if you’re also on Medium, say hi!
leaning in to search-based growth ↝ I’ll share how I’m integrating Pinterest and Google to support my goals. (And while I’m focusing a lot on writing, I haven’t discounted long-form YouTube videos.)
growing my email list ↝ on here, yes, but also on Convert Kit (because sustainability, remember?).
focusing on building community ↝ through the Wild Creatives open group and Brandcrafters Guild membership (opening again soon) — and both are off-social to give our nervous system a reprieve.
using social media to supplement my ideas, not be the primary conduit for them. (And notice how I’m not giving up social media entirely, just changing my relationship with it.)
and creating a similar way of operating for my content writing business where I leverage search-based growth and connection to get more SaaS and wellness clients (which is the kind of brand-building and marketing processes I’ll share in more depth within Brandcrafters Guild for fellow service providers).

And now it’s your turn.

What industry best practices are you letting go of this year and replacing with you-shaped best practices?
What beliefs have you been taught that no longer feel true to you?
How can you prioritize slowness, stillness, and substance in the way you create and consume?

As always, I would love to hear your musings and insights. You can share by clicking the button below.

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