It was quiet when I woke up — Husband was still asleep beside me, and neither Kiddo nor my mother had stirred out of their rooms yet. Not even the cat was at my door yet. So I decided to take advantage. I slipped out of the bedroom and downstairs for a much-needed hygge morning. I made some coffee, gathered my books, journals, and pens, put some comforting ambiance on TV, and slipped on a new, comfy sweater. Then I settled in to contemplate some simple but beautiful things.

I love the pen I have been writing with lately. It’s a Uniball Air, exhumed from the depths of one drawer or bag or another, and I have been re-discovering just how much I adore it! I don’t know what it is about the construction of these particular pens, but they feel so…dainty yet controlled. It reminds me of someone in China or Japan writing the most delicate characters with just the tip of their brush. Such control and skill! That’s what these pens feel like to me. It as though I am using the daintiest tool yet executing my writing with such elegance, though a different type of elegance entirely from, say, a fountain pen. Needless to say, I ordered more.

When the pen I am writing with feels beautiful, then the writing I do feels beautiful. When the writing I am doing feels beautiful, then I want to do it more. I love writing longhand and did it so often when I was younger, of course. I would fill notebook after notebook with my stories, all painstakingly handwritten. Nowadays, such a practice almost feels like an indulgence: taking that extra time to handwrite when the world is so often encouraging us to work faster, work quicker, do more. Handwriting takes time, it takes thought, and it takes effort…none of which can be rushed.

As the summer starts to wind down and the school year approaches (*digs a trench around myself*), maybe this is my sign to keep on slowing down. Maybe less, with focused intention and attention, is better than a lot. Maybe I need to be more aware of when I am trying to cram in more when what I and my students need is for me to slow down. So maybe I have accidentally stumbled onto a goal for this year, for myself as well for my classes: to slow down and focus on the dainty and the elegant points that might be missed if I rush onward.