Is it time to sloooooooooooooow down?

Is it time to take a moment to reconsider how we are spending our time and perhaps slow down?

It's a reoccurring conversation I find myself having with a lot of different people. Things are moving so fast with our busy lives and all the technology around us, bombarding us with more and more information at a faster and faster rate. I do feel at some point we are all just going to implode as a society. If everything continues to speed up at such a fast clip how will we be able to absorb, adapt and handle it?

im·plode

 verb \im-ˈplōd\

im·plod·edim·plod·ing

1. to collapse inward as if from external pressure: also: to become greatly reduced as if from collapsing

2. to break down or fall apart from within, self-destruct

I know, is this ironic coming from me? The women who moves at a high rate of speed, with a life firmly entrenched in the very technology I'm speaking of?

But I'm paying attention, taking things off my plate and gradually making little changes here and there to slow things down a bit. 

I believe we have to. There is simply no way to absorb the inspiration and information we are exposed to in a way that will ultimately benefit us. To learn from or to enjoy something, it often has to be pondered, taken in and explored, even savored while waiting for it's lesson, value or beauty to be revealed to us. That can't happen when skimming an image of a fantastic room in 3 seconds. The best parts are certain to be missed.

A number of things have gotten me thinking about this. It's the stress I initially feel whenever I hear of some new form of technology that has been introduced that everyone is loving. Seriously!? Something else I have to learn and add to my plate? It's the comment that came in just minutes after releasing an issue of House of Fifty. "Just read it, it's great! Best one yet, loved it all!" Okay, I'm going to just be blunt here. Thank you, but I don't know what they did but they didn't read it. It was skimmed, just as so many of us have put ourselves in situations where there is so much information to take in on a daily basis that the best we can do is skim. And unfortunately that means we are probably missing the best parts of what we are choosing to expose ourselves to and participate in. It takes time to absorb and gather information properly and we are simply not giving ourselves that time. There isn't enough time to take it all in, and yet we try...skimming content, and in fact, skimming through our lives as well, barely noticing the details that make it all worthwhile and meaningful.

I don't know what the answer is. But perhaps the first thing to do is simply stop to consider the question. Does this resonate for your life? Personally, I'm taking more and more things off my plate. Some things I've taken off because they no longer fit, others I can pass on to someone else (like the cleaning of my house for example, leaving me more time to just relax or do activities with the kids). Other items removed from the daily schedule prove to be more difficult decisions to make. I miss some of them, but its necessary. What do I want to foster in my life and how does that mean I should be spending my time?