My beautician and I have thought-provoking conversations. Yesterday, while Bonnie was taming and tinting my ageing eyebrows, making them look fierce, we chatted about time.
We started with photography and how phones have simplified the process of capturing images. After buying an iPhone 15 Pro Max—I saved up for it for weeks—I no longer drag my DSLR camera around with me. If I see something I want to photograph, I just reach into my pocket for my phone. It’s convenient and quick. I can zoom in or out, taking wide-angle pictures or right-under-my-nose shots. Best of all, despite the lack of effort, my photos are always beautifully sharp.
“DSLR photography is slower than phone photography,” I told Bonnie. She raised an expertly shaped eyebrow, not really understanding what I meant, so I explained:
Before taking my first photo with my DSLR camera, I need to choose the most appropriate lens and attach it to my camera body. Then, I must select the best ISO, aperture and shutter speed settings for the subject and conditions. When the camera is ready, I press the shutter, look at the captured photo on the screen and maybe adjust a setting or two. I take my time.
Of course, I sometimes miss a shot if I’m not ready when a greedy bird lands on the picnic table in front of me, hoping to feast on the leftover crumbs, or my daughter suddenly bursts into giggles, or my husband’s face screws up with dislike after realising the milk is sour. But is that a problem? Is capturing every possible moment with a picture important?
I used to go on photography outings with my daughter Sophie. With cameras around our necks, we’d amble through the bush or park, or along a street, occasionally stopping to take a photo while discussing camera angles and settings. We’d experiment, compare notes, and look at each other’s photos. We’d go slow, extracting as much joy as possible from each moment, enjoying each other’s company and the scenery before us.
Yesterday, I had a second slow conversation. I moaned to my husband about my slow website: “It takes forever to change a page. Who will wait around on my blog while a new post loads? No one.”
We’ve become very impatient, haven’t we? If a webpage doesn’t load instantly, we give up and go somewhere else. We don’t even wonder whether what we want to view is worth the wait. We’ve moved on from the early dial-up days when we didn’t mind the slow speed of the Internet. We’d sit glued to our screens, waiting for each page to appear or each video to load with a sense of awe and wonder.
So, yesterday, I had a problem: my website was slow to load. I knew I should do something to fix the speed, but I didn’t want to.
“It would be much easier to delete my blog or make it private,” I told Andy. “I’m fed up of maintaining it.”
But I didn’t hit ‘delete’. Instead, I researched web-optimising plugins. And then, despite my reluctance to sink any more money into my site, I bought one that, hopefully, will give my web pages a push and force them to move faster. I can’t have the slowest unschooling website on the Internet, can I? That would kill the last bit of interest people have in my blog. Things have to be quick.
Or do they?
There’s value in taking time to read an article properly while pondering it, isn’t there, instead of flipping quickly to the next one? It’s good to slow down.
Not so long ago, I read a book by Cal Newport called Slow Productivity:
Hustle culture. Burnout. Quiet quitting. Today we’re either sacrificing ourselves on the altar of success or we’re rejecting the idea of ambition entirely. But it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. There is a way to create meaningful work as part of a balanced life, and it’s called ‘slow productivity’.
Coined by Cal Newport, the bestselling author of Deep Work and Digital Minimalism, slow productivity is a revolutionary philosophy based on simple principles. From managing your energy according to the season, to identifying which projects to pursue and which to set aside, to building a schedule that yields maximum output with minimum stress, this timely and essential book will revolutionise how you work, helping you to accomplish great things at a more humane pace.
Parents can also accomplish great things at a more humane pace. Instead of racing through each day, trying to achieve as much as possible, we could slow down and focus on what matters the most: the kids in front of us. We could fix our eyes on them, listen carefully, and give them what they need in the present moment instead of living at a hectic, cram-it-all-in pace for a future that could but might not be.
Arriving home from my appointment at the beauty salon with my fierce, rejuvenated eyebrows, I was still thinking about my DSLR camera. You know what? I’m going to dust it down, sling it around my neck, and then amble down a bush track. I hope I see something I’d like to photograph. More importantly, I hope I remember how to use my camera.
So, what about you? Do you sometimes feel you’re running through your days at an uncomfortable pace? Do you yearn to slow down? And do you think unschooling is a slow but productive way of life?
More Eyebrow Stories
Here’s something a bit different: more eyebrow stories. Although it sounds strange, eyebrows can teach us a lot about unschooling.
Photos
Back in time to 2020. Callum, his dog, Crash, and I ambled around the lake. My son didn’t mind waiting while I set up my camera to take a few photos.
If you have time, why not stop by and say hello?
Hello, Sue! Though my productive days feel like my best days, my slow times produce some of my best memories. I crave busyness, yet I truly thrive on peaceful quiet, so it is a balance I strive to achieve each day. Will I get enough of each today? How will my family members affect that balance? My husband has a melancholic temperament and so will need an abundance of quiet, alone time without really any busyness – or even sensing mine with the kids because none of them that are still at home year-round are melancholics. The kids at home are very active and of course many are still noisy, yet I know as their mom that they still need quiet time to reflect and process and grow like flowers. I love using my Canon camera (though I do not have additional lenses) and yet as I just looked at it here at the desk, it has grown dusty as it is so easy to each for my iPhone 13 with a decent camera, a guarantee of many photos taken because I always have it with me, and a record in my phone of each photos location/date/time. I am at a crossroads of how to use each. I struggle with this but try to convince myself that it is simply more important to just keep taking photos than worry about the how. The photos help me remember those moments that I slowed down long enough to take the photo instead of rushing into the next moment. I hope you have a beautiful day!
Staci,
Oh yes, we have days when we seem to achieve a lot, and we feel satisfied when we look back at all we’ve done. I love those days! But I wonder if slow days can be productive too. We might do lots of only one thing, like make good progress with a project.
Also, are we doing the most important things on our slow days when we don’t seem to achieve as much? As you said, kids need quiet times to reflect and process and grow like flowers. I like your words! I always enjoyed long conversations with my kids over coffee where we’d listen to each other and dive deep into a topic or something more personal. Aren’t we fortunate to be able to linger when talking and not have to rush onto the next thing?
At the end of 2024, I wrote down all the main events of my year in my journal. I scrolled through my camera roll to trigger my memory and enjoyed big and small moments all over again. I love my iPhone and camera roll! But I still want to return to my DSLR camera.
I have a Nikon camera. I can connect it directly to my phone when I want to download my photos. So my DSLR photos end up on my camera roll too!
I hope you also have a beautiful day, Staci. I’ve enjoyed starting my Saturday morning chatting to you! 😊🩷