Learning to Live Without Urgency - Walking Slower Into Myself

Constant Activity — A Curated Life

Every season of life brings challenges. That’s the plight of being human. We can’t escape struggle, pain, or suffering — they’re woven into the experience of being alive.

Because of that, we often try to outpace what hurts.

We distract ourselves in many ways. Drinking. Smoking. Drugs. Doom scrolling. And one of the most socially acceptable — and least questioned — forms of avoidance: staying busy.

Constant activity is rarely labeled as a problem. In fact, it’s often praised. But a carefully curated fullness can easily become a way of not feeling what’s actually happening underneath.

“Just Stay Busy”

In my twenties, I stayed very busy.

I dated a lot. Much of it was fun — novelty, excitement, connection. And on the other side of that fun was crushing heartbreak. And the cure for heartbreak, the advice shared casually among girlfriends, was always the same:

Just stay busy.

So we did.

We filled our social calendars. Happy hours. Parties. Events. Trips. Work. Shopping. Anything that kept the evenings full and the weekends loud. No empty space. No quiet. No time to feel sad — or to feel much of anything at all.

We weren’t going to let heartbreak take us down.

But we also weren’t letting it move through us.

That pattern didn’t end with dating. It followed me forward.

Avoidance Disguised as Productivity

I carried that same strategy into a serious relationship — one I knew, deep down, wasn’t right. But I was already “in” it. Living together. Married. Talking about houses and futures that felt more assumed than chosen.

I didn’t want to face the possibility that I had made a mistake.

So I stayed busy.

I worked a full-time job — fifty hours most weeks. I enrolled in massage therapy school at night and on weekends. I taught yoga at six in the morning. There was almost no time at home. Very little stillness. Very little space for questions to surface.

Busyness had become my survival strategy.

Eventually, I left that relationship completely exhausted. Not tired in a way sleep could fix — depleted in a deeper way. I didn’t need a vacation. I needed a different pace of living.

That is when I decided to move to Spain.

When Life Forces You to Slow Down

In Spain, there was an obvious slowdown built into daily life.

We didn’t have a car, so I walked everywhere — to work, to the market, through the city. Two miles a day, sometimes more. In the heat. In the rain. Whatever the day offered, I walked in it. We chose where to live based on proximity — to food, to work, to what we needed most.

Walking is inherently slow. And because of that, you begin to notice things.

The curve of a street.
The light on old stone.
The small rituals of daily life happening around you.

With nothing to rush toward, your thoughts begin to loosen their grip. They wander. They open. They move without being pushed.

You couldn’t outpace the day there.

Businesses opened later. Closed in the middle of the afternoon. Reopened in the evening. No one bent their rhythm to accommodate urgency or efficiency.

At first, I resisted it.

Spain didn’t care about my American sense of urgency. The day moved at its own pace, unconcerned with my timelines or expectations. And when I really stopped to consider it, I had to ask myself: what was so urgent about getting everything done faster anyway?

Nothing meaningful was at risk. No essential truth was being protected by speed. The urgency I carried felt inherited more than necessary — a habit, not a requirement.

But slowly — almost quietly — something shifted.

When the distractions fell away, life started speaking again.

Stillness After a Life of Busyness

Spain wasn’t idyllic. It wasn’t curated or soft-edged. It was honest. Raw. Unconcerned with appearances.

And that rawness gave me permission to look at my own life more honestly — without polishing it, without distracting myself from what was there. In that clarity, I learned something new:

Stillness only feels dangerous when you’ve been relying on busyness to cope.

Without constant activity, my mind wandered. My body softened. Thoughts I had outrun for years finally caught up to me — not to overwhelm me, but to be acknowledged.

Writing became the place where all of this could land.

Not dramatically. Not as salvation. Just as a place to set things down.

Writing got the noise out of my head and onto paper. It helped me make sense of the past without rewriting it. It let me touch the future without forcing it. It kept me in the present moment. It brought me back into my body — where life was actually happening.

I wouldn’t say journaling saved my life.
But it made my life inhabitable again.

Motherhood: The Ultimate Busy Season

Motherhood, in many ways, is the ultimate busy season.

We are busy even when we don’t want to be. Busy in ways we didn’t manufacture or choose. There are days when I say, I just need a day off — and then correct myself to something more realistic: four hours. A small pocket of time to do nothing. Time without interruption. Time without hearing Mom, I need this every few minutes.

Not because I don’t love my kids.
Not because I don’t love taking care of them.

But because I love myself.

I don’t want that imagined four-hour vacation to be productive. I don’t want to write, workout, or read something that will improve me. I want to sit in the sun. Breathe fresh air. Binge-watch Netflix. Let my nervous system uncoil without expectation.

It is incredibly easy to lose yourself in the daily grind of motherhood.

The tasks are constant.
The needs are immediate.
The interruptions are relentless.

And even when we slow externally, the internal urgency often keeps going.

This season is busy by nature. You didn’t create that. You didn’t fail to manage it better. This is the reality of caring for small humans.

But within that reality, there are still moments.

Small ones.

A full breath.
Eyes closed for ten seconds longer than usual.
Feeling your body in a chair.
Stepping into the sun for just a moment.

Moments where you remember:
I am here.
I am important.
I am doing important work.

Mañana

In Spain, there is a word you hear often: mañana.

It simply means tomorrow.

Not in a careless way. Not as avoidance. But as a reminder that while some things are pressing, not everything needs to be accomplished right now.

Life will still be there tomorrow.

Mañana isn’t about procrastination. It’s about trust. Trust that rest is not failure. Trust that life doesn’t collapse if you pause. Trust that tending to yourself does not mean you are falling behind.

That lesson followed me home.

In motherhood — and in life — there will always be more to do. More needs. More noise. More unfinished lists. But not everything requires your attention in this moment.

Some things can wait.
Some things belong to tomorrow.

And sometimes, the most important work is simply allowing yourself to slow down enough to remember that.