A month of slowing down

All that rushing around and the constant irritation when others got in her way wasn’t making journalist Bernice Nikijuluw feel like a nice person. She decided to spend a month slowing everything down.

I hadn’t made any preparations for my month of slowing down—or, better yet, my impatience-reduction month. This proved to be a terrible idea on the very first day. I was third in line for the bathroom and, once I showered and arrived at the baker’s (I love fresh bread), someone snuck in ahead of me and needed to know the differences between the various types of bread on the shelves in painful detail.

I thought to myself: I’ll get up earlier tomorrow, and I’ll officially start my month of slowing down then. As the man in front of me debated whether he should go for the spelt or just stick with a loaf of coarse wholewheat, ugly thoughts started to form in my head. In spite of everything, I managed to make my train 45 minutes later and somehow was the first person to arrive at work. So what had I gotten myself all worked up about?