Back to School, Back to Myself

Notes on time, perfectionism, and remembering the beauty of the how

Someone said to me recently: of course time feels like it’s moving faster—you’re older now. When you were five, a year was basically 20% of your entire existence. At thirty-three, it’s just 3%. No wonder summers used to feel endless—back then, a year was practically a lifetime. Now it’s a rounding error. LOL. I’m trying to forget—or at least reframe—this math.

Because if this summer taught me anything, it’s that time will keep moving no matter what. I blinked, and it was gone. Days accelerating, weeks dissolving, and suddenly the calendar tilting us back toward fall. I had a hard time being present. Everything moved too quickly, and I often felt swept along, as if time had its own current and I forgot how to swim against it.

But then, I recently had an experience of time expanding. I spent two nights at Troutbeck, New York, for a retreat with a group of cultural workers—and it felt like stepping into another rhythm of life. The days stretched out like they were holding us, like time itself had softened and widened to make room. What could have been a blur of panels and programming instead became a cosmic spa, a long collective exhale.

Although we were only there for thirty-six hours, it felt like a full week’s vacation. That’s what happens, I think, in spaces that are truly safe—where honesty is welcomed, masks aren’t necessary, and beauty is allowed to do its work on us. The pace shifts. Conversations slow down. Laughter lingers longer in the air. We could simply arrive as ourselves, and in doing so, the clock seemed to move differently.

I had attended the retreat the year before as well, and it left such an impression that I ended up writing about it for 1202 Magazine. That piece, Igniting Moral Imagination, was my attempt to capture what it feels like to be in a place where time bends toward expansiveness, where community is the method, and where imagination becomes a kind of medicine.

Coming back here now feels a little like the first day of school: nerves and excitement tangled together, a sharpened pencil in hand, a blank page waiting. I always feel a little self-conscious after a gap in publishing—like I should apologize for vanishing—but I want this space to be less about deadlines and more about return. About gathering. About starting again. And I’m deeply grateful to each of you who reads. The fact that you give me your time—the most precious thing any of us has—feels like an honor.

One of my revelations this summer was realizing how much perfectionism I still carry. For me, perfection has always been about safety. I only feel emotionally secure when things are “just right.” At its best, it can feel like discernment—knowing when to improve something and when to let it go. But more often, it shrinks me. It convinces me to lower myself, to hold back, to choose the safety of never messing up instead of the risk of showing what I might truly be capable of.

I’ve always felt that the process matters more than the outcome—that how we move, how we create, how we love, how we gather is more important than any polished result. But the world we live in doesn’t operate that way. It rewards speed, achievement, metrics. It’s easy to lose your center inside of that, to forget that process is the point.

Mary Oliver often reminded us that attention is a form of devotion. That what we notice, what we sit with, what we give our time to—that is where the sacred is. I think of this often. If I can give attention to the process, to the small imperfect steps along the way, then maybe I can remember that the how matters more than the what. That showing up—messy, unfinished, human—can be its own kind of devotion.

So I’m trying to shift. To focus less on outcomes and more on the how. How we gather. How we create. How we do activism. How we love. How we show up. Because the how is where life actually happens—in process, in progress, in the imperfect unfolding.

I ask myself now: what has perfectionism held me back from? And what could open if I set it down, even just a little?

That is the invitation I leave with you too.

And because it feels right to honor beginnings, here’s a photo of me in my back-to-school shirt and a headpiece I clearly invented for the occasion (lol). She wasn’t worried about time. She wasn’t weighed down by perfectionism. She was free, present, and proud of her own imagination.

I love her—and my promise to her is to keep showing up, no matter how imperfectly. Which is why I’m back here now, after an unexpectedly long and unplanned summer break.

Con gratitud,
Sue