The Slow Hand
Oct. 20/26
I've spent a good part of this year working alongside an AI assistant, and I'll say it plainly: it has changed how I work. It's quick, it catches what I miss, and it has become part of the daily furniture. It has also made me notice what my hands aren't doing anymore.
I came to that slowly, the way you notice a fence line has drifted. Nothing broke. Things just got easier, and easy has a way of taking over a day without asking.
Take the pen. I buy a good notebook every so often, with the best intentions. I sit down to journal, write three lines, and reach for the phone to look something up. Most days I lose that argument. I haven't solved it, and I won't pretend to. But I've noticed that the three lines I do write by hand come out differently than anything I type. They're slower and plainer. I can't delete my way out of a thought, so I have to finish it first. A page of my own handwriting is also the only record I keep that doesn't need a battery, a login, or an update.
The hardbound book is the same story. There's a favorite on my shelf, the kind with real weight to it, and when I actually sit down with it, something settles. No notification arrives in the middle of a paragraph. The page doesn't offer to summarize itself for me. I read a chapter and then just sit there with it for a minute, which is a habit I'd nearly lost. For a lot of years the quiet part of the day came built in. Now I have to go find it and set it on the table on purpose.
Then there's the supermarket. I've been catching myself searching online for what to eat, what's new, what's worth trying. A search gives you back what you already knew to ask for. A shelf gives you what you didn't. I walk the aisles now and then with no list, just looking. Something I'd never have typed into a search box catches my eye, a grain I haven't cooked with, a jar from somewhere I couldn't place on a map. Some of it goes back on the shelf. Some of it ends up on my plate and teaches me something. Either way I came across it myself, with my own eyes, which is a different thing from being handed it.
And the long walk. I don't mean exercise, though it counts. I mean going out the door without a destination in my head and letting the day show me something. Sophie has no opinion about my inbox. She wants to smell the same corner she smelled yesterday as if it were news, and I've come to respect that. It's a kind of attention nobody has figured out how to automate.
I want to be careful here, because none of this is a case against the tools. I'm not giving up my technology, and I'd be a fool to. It does real work for me every day, and I'm glad of it. What I'm after is something harder than quitting, and it's the thing I keep turning over. It's balance. A good tool never asks you to stop knowing the ground. It's just very easy to let it. When something does the walking for you, your own legs don't get stronger, and the same goes for your eyes, your handwriting, and your patience.
That's the challenge in my life right now, and I don't have a clean answer. The digital world is moving fast, faster than anything I saw in twenty-seven years of watching seasons turn. I can't slow it down. What I can do is decide how much of my own day gets handed over and how much I keep in my own hands.
So here's an invitation, and it's a small one. Tomorrow morning, before the screen comes on, take a few moments with the day ahead. Ask yourself where the technology will carry you, and where you'd rather carry yourself. Maybe the answer is a notebook and a pen. Maybe it's a hardbound book you've been meaning to open, the aisles of a grocery store with no list, or a long walk with no destination. Maybe it's only finishing a thought before you look something up.
You don't have to give anything up, and nobody's keeping score. Just take the few moments, and see what the day looks like once you've asked.
From the Field:
Food Safety Recalls & Outbreaks — https://www.foodsafety.gov/recalls-and-outbreaks
Mayo Clinic — mayoclinic.org
Six Colors — sixcolors.com
Read more at https://gardener-of-life.com
If this resonates, buy me a coffee — it keeps the field notes coming.
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