For most of my life, I’ve equated slow seasons with failure, like if I wasn’t chasing something, I wasn’t moving forward.
I’ve always been a dreamer and, hand in hand, a doer. I’m not one who can just sit and watch, I’ve got to get in on the action. I’ve spent most of my life as if there’s nothing good about the slow. Always running towards what is next, hardly taking breaths in between.
This drive served me well when I was an ambitious 20-something finishing college and landing my first “big girl” job. It helped when I later left that job to take the wild leap of starting my own art studio and brand. It helped me secure major retail deals and national press. It helped me build bigger and bigger. And frankly, even though I’d found myself in burnout time and time again - I enjoyed the sprint.
For creatives, slow seasons can feel terrifying because creativity itself is often tied to momentum, output, and even recognition.
As I sit at the finish line of two years of what feels like momentous work in my career, I am still for the first time in awhile. Without a definitive next step or something new to chase —I’m left asking - what’s next? And why?
Finding the Root of Why
The more I dig in to my running and hustling mentality, I see that there is a deep-rooted belief I’ve held about my identity. While I will try not to go too deep, I know I have tied a lot of my identity in my work, in what I create, in what I produce. My heart often turned rest into productivity, refreshment into another project. I haven’t always known how to let a moment of stillness be what it was meant to be.
Right now, everything in my life is telling me that stillness and slow is what I’m called to. My heart is saying, let’s stay here for a while. My mind is getting used to being quiet again, instead of running with lists and anxious thoughts. This is something I hadn’t realized I was missing out on. The quiet of the mind.
And yet the war is within me—the belief that I must be moving, I must be doing to be of value, of use, of importance.
Slow feels unnatural and yet I keep stumbling on reminders that there are beautiful things here. While I’ve wrestled with not having some thought out plan of where to run to next - one day a friend of mine suggested,
“maybe you don’t see the next step yet because God knows you’d take off running.”
That felt true. I haven’t sat long enough in a long time. I haven’t taken time to notice. And even in my intentions to be present, I’m still in the back of my mind pushing to some outcome.
I recently read Carlos Whittaker’s book Reconnected. In it he does an experiment where he disconnected from tech for 7 weeks to see if there is a significant change in his life and brain. There’s a story within where he writes about how humans are said to walk at 3mph—and he compares it to before technology how people got everywhere by walking, even Jesus walked everywhere. At 3mph. How long would it take you to get to the corner store if you walked? During that walk, that much slower pace of life, there’s a lot of slow, presence, noticing that takes place.
That idea stuck with me.
How often am I sprinting ahead with my doing, instead of walking in step with the pace of where God needs me to be?
The truth is I have to break up with the idea that running and striving is what is best for me at all times. Not everything is reached that way. Some things are only achieved by the pause, by the slow, by waiting.
Creativity also cultivates, roots, deepens during these unseen seasons. It's never wasted.
It’s Okay To Not Know
It’s okay not to be running. It’s okay to take a leisurely walk to the next place in life (by choice or not). It’s okay to unravel and wrestle. To not know. To admit that we’re all still figuring things out. To remember that if we knew it all, if we had all the answers - well, then we’d be God—and that’s not true. And the truth is, even when we think we know, we still don’t really know what’s up ahead of us anyway.
Not knowing could actually be the place you’ve been looking for.
It is often in my “not knowing” that my ego, my need for validation, my habit of producing to prove something have been broken off me. It’s in the not knowing, that I experiment, and create — try new things. It’s the the not knowing, I wonder, gain curiosity and question my motivations of the things I’m walking towards. Where I find the things that truly matter again, that I take the time to notice the muses all around.
Sometimes, you run so fast you forget why you were running in the first place.
And eventually one day like me you might hit one of your finish lines and there’s no medal waiting for you—but a soft place to land. I’m telling you, as I tell myself - take a seat in the soft place. Pause. Find the wonder again.
Sitting is hard for my ego. Humbling for my pride, which has long carried productivity like a badge of honor. I continue to let go of measuring my worth by what I create. Just like anything I’ve created, it had value when I made it—and whether it’s noticed or not, that value remains. The same goes for me with God, our Creator. There was value in us from the very beginning, and we don’t have to earn it or prove it through what we produce. I’m learning to live in the freedom of that truth.
And as we create — even when the canvas stays blank. Even when the words aren’t coming. Even when the ideas aren’t rushing in. You are still a creative being, you still carry value because you have the fingerprints of the Creator on you.
Gentle Ways To Stay Open
This season of not knowing and slowing down is forcing me not to just do things for the sake of doing them—but to ask why. To pause, to wait, to listen.
Here are a few gentle ways I’m learning to stay present, creative, and open to what’s unfolding:
Take slow walks, or silent car rides and go without distractions. Listen to the silence. Embrace it. Notice. Let awareness of the presence do its work on you.
Return to old sparks of joy or try something new. I’ve been reading which I often don’t have time for! I have been reimagining old DIYs around the house. Pick up a forgotten hobby or a new project to remember what lights you up.
Create unseen. Doodle, collage, write freely. Make something for the sake of making.
Don’t move to the next thing without clarity. My internet sis, Bethny Ricks, wrote all about this here. Go take a read.
Culture tells us to run faster, build bigger, and stay visible. But we get to choose differently. We get to grow in hidden places. To create from a place of alignment, clarity, and rest—not pressure.
I’m learning this again. And if you’re here too, wondering what’s next or wrestling with the stillness—you’re not alone.
There’s still growth happening in the unseen.
Good things grow here in slow.
