A Holiday Break From Being Hummingbird Busy

November 24, 2021

With the holidays approaching, this is your public service announcement to slow down a little bit.

I’ve been running on less than a full tank of coffee/gas this year. I’m trying to figure out how to make more time to stop and (responsibly) smell the whiskeys.

One of the ways I’m doing it is more forced physical reading time. I’ve got books on every surface in my place these days. Every time I start to space out I try to convince myself to take in a few lines or more.

I’m deliberately leaving books out where I can easily dip in too. Poetry. Philosophy. Novels with extra craftful language. This quote stopped me dead in my tracks the other night, on the topic of slowing down, from the new god Ocean Vuong. If Hemingway and Bukowski had a baby in turn of the century Hartford, it’d be him. In On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous he writes,

“Outside, the hummingbird’s whirring sounds almost like human breath. It’s beak jabs into the pool of sugared water at the feeder‘s base. What a terrible life, I think now, to have to move so fast just to stay in one place.“

-Ocean Vuong, “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous”

I’m putting this here because I want to carry it into my holidays. There’s no need to move so fast just to stay in one place. It pays to just be for a while. And that’s something I needed to learn to do. It’s something I need to keep up my practice of.

To relax, pick up a book, and get present with some words and a feeling, even just for a moment.