Almost anything can be slow. The key component is giving a pursuit your full attention at the moment. (Sharing an activity with friends or being outdoors also is encouraged.) Here's a list of just some of the slow pursuits:
• Slow hobbies: knitting, painting, woodworking, gardening, baking.
• Slow travel: Traveling closer to home can be illuminating; if ranging further, staying in one place for a week instead of hopscotching to a new destination each day.
• Slow TV: the film loop of a blazing yule log, of course, but also the 13-hour Arby's commercial of a brisket cooking in a smoker, or Norway's seven-hour train journey, even Lagavulin distillery's 45-minute video of actor Nick Offerman drinking scotch by a fire.
• Slow fashion: making or buying garments for quality and longevity, or repurposing older clothing. Slow fashion also encourages fair wages, lower carbon footprints and (ideally) zero waste.
• Slow relationships: taking time to savor, deepen and invigorate the important relationships in your life.
• Slow exercise: combining working out with time in nature or time with friends.
• Slow parenting: guiding kids to experience the joys of free time and creativity.
• Slow money: using your money for things that really matter and buying from within your community.
• Slow business: instead of multi-tasking, focus on doing one thing at a time really well. You'll probably find that it will take less time than if you're juggling several tasks at once.
• Slow journalism: A London quarterly magazine, Delayed Gratification, revisits the events of the previous three months to see what happened after the dust settled; the anti-Twitter.
Kim Ode
