I’m going to shut down my online shop soon. I haven’t updated it in a while because I haven’t made anything I want to sell in that time. That doesn’t mean I haven’t been creating. I’ve been painting a ton… it all just kind of… sucks.

I’m into that!

It needs to suck and is going to suck for a while. But what matters is I’m learning a lot about the materials and methods. More importantly, it’s cathartic as fuck and that’s what I want my art practice to be first and foremost—something that feels good/ right for me to do.

In the process of shutting down the shop, I’ve been moving over all the images of my artwork (some on neither of my sites), and I’m amazed at how much I’ve made in the last nine years. I haven’t even been making visual art for a decade but have made so much cool shit I’m proud of. A lot of shitty shit too but, like I said, I have grown to appreciate it.

The process has got me thinking about the time it takes to make a life that means art and how so much goes unseen, whether from inattention by the public or on purpose by the artist herself.

On her own timeline

Hilma af Klint’s Paintings for the Temple—193 works made between 1906 and 1915—predate the major players of abstract art by years. Yet, she insisted they be kept hidden for at least 20 years after her death. She believed the world wasn’t ready for them. She trusted that one day, we might be.

When the Guggenheim finally gave her a retrospective in 2018, it became the museum’s most attended exhibition ever. Turns out, girlfriend was right.

What gets me about Hilma isn’t just her foresight. It’s her faith. The audacity to create at that scale, in that style, with no immediate recognition, no validation, no demand from the world. Only a deep, inward pull that it mattered. Even if no one saw it. Yet.

The invisible witness

Vivian Maier is a perfect companion in this conversation. She worked as a nanny in Chicago, all the while documenting the world around her with stunning attention and intimacy. She left behind more than 100,000 photographs that no one saw until they were discovered in a storage unit after her death.

She never tried to sell them. Never even showed them, really. She just kept walking, observing, shooting. Something inside her couldn’t not do it. Something said pay attention.

Ugh. Man, that has something holy to it, right? Making without asking for anything back. Making because not making would be a kind of spiritual violence to yourself.

Meanwhile, out here in the hustle

Their stories feel especially radical right now because it seems like everything else is speeding up.

According to recent research, people really do feel like time is accelerating. One theory? The more we repeat the same routines, the faster time seems to pass. Psychologists and everyday normies like you and me agree: Newness slows time. Novelty expands it. Repetition collapses it into a blur.

Enter our daily digital lives, where screens flatten experience, and the rhythm of work becomes an endless scroll. Between Slack pings, email threads, calendar invites, and the algorithmic urge to stay visible, we’ve created a culture that equates speed with success. The faster you deliver, respond, produce—the more valuable you are.

We’ve also created what researchers now call “technostress,” a state of chronic burnout caused by our always-on relationship with digital devices. It fragments our focus, disrupts our creativity, and leaves us in a state of low-grade panic. You know the feeling. You’re working… but not really getting anywhere.

Reclaiming slow

So what do Hilma and Vivian offer us in this predicament? A counterspell. They remind us that art—true, enduring, soul-stretching art—takes time. Sometimes a lifetime. Sometimes several. It asks for patience, not performance. It asks to not even be called art for a while if need be. For inner alignment, not external affirmation.

They remind us that not everything is for public consumption. That some work needs to live in the drawer, the attic, the shadow. That waiting isn’t wasting. It’s working on a different level. And they remind us that it’s okay—maybe even vital—to make things just for yourself. To trust that what you’re doing has value, even if the world never asks for it.

Slowness is a practice. Here’s what it’s looked like for me lately:

• Taking longer with my art projects. Letting ideas simmer instead of sprinting to the finish.
• Not sharing new work while it still hot from the oven.
• Reading books that don’t necessarily “help” with anything.
• Sitting with a single sentence I’ve written and asking, “What the fuck does this actually mean?”
• Making things no one will ever see.

It feels counterintuitive to the rest of my life. But it’s also a little freeing. It returns me to the love of the process, the mystery of it. It teaches me to trust the unfolding. There’s a lot of talk about brave creativity, but we usually mean public bravery—sharing, showing, selling. I think there’s another kind. The bravery of doing the work in silence. Of not knowing what it will become. Of letting it take the time it needs. Of putting it down when it’s not working, too.

So if you’re working on something right now and it feels like it’s moving slow… then hell yeah, sister. Let it. If you’re not working on anything at all, just watching and listening—also good. I think that’s part of it too.

So much takes time. Not just the doing, but the becoming. The readiness. The ripening.

Hilma knew. Vivian knew. Somewhere in us, I think, we all know too.

I would’ve eaten the marshmallow

I am not a patient person. You know that famous psychological study where kids are told they can eat one marshmallow now or get two if they wait? Yeah. I’d have eaten the marshmallow immediately. Boom. No hesitation. It was delicious, suckers! No regrets.

I would have eaten the marshmallow without waiting not because I don’t believe in the power of patience, but because I don’t trust the promise…

What if someone else swoops in and eats it first? What if I wait and get nothing — who even are these people in white coats standing in for Mrs. Brown? How did they get in our classroom?? What if there’s a fire drill at marshmallow school and I never get the second one?! Who’s feeling pretty silly now, Monica?!!

Better to take what’s here now, right? YOLO. Or maybe it’s FOMO. Either way, I’m GO GO GO GO. I’ve always felt the clock ticking in the background. And that shit is loud.

Driven, not necessarily slow

And yet, I’m also, admittedly, wildly driven. I am the kind of person who gets a dopamine hit every time I check something off a to-do list. I make one every morning. Sometimes I add things I’ve already done just for the satisfaction of crossing them off.

I was the goody two-shoes marshmallow kid too, in some ways — the one who waited because she wanted to be the best at waiting. I like rules, timelines, gold stars. And for the most part, this impatience-meets-ambition combo has served me well. I’ve gotten a lot of shit done.

Then came Alice

Enter motherhood. Or, more precisely, enter Alice. This tiny, chubby, beautiful lil boss baby has thrown a full-body wrench into my carefully structured time management machine. From 7 p.m. to 9 a.m. Monday through Friday, and 24/7 on weekends, I am not in charge. She is. And she doesn’t care about my lists.

Some days I get things done in 15-minute increments. Other days I throw the entire plan out the window. My schedule bends and reshapes itself around hers. I used to be the one who decided when I eat the marshmallow. Now she does.

Learning to sit still 😐

Yesterday, as naps grow more dramatic and less instantaneous, I sat rocking her for hours. Just sitting. Still (unless you count the rocking). I don’t think I’ve ever been that still for that long in my life. And, to my surprise, I loved it. Later that night, I rocked her again before bed, even though she didn’t need it. Even though I had other things I could have been doing. Even though the list was sitting there, unchecked.

A few months ago, this would have been unthinkable. When she was a newborn, I adored holding her — this long-dreamed-of joy made real — but I hated the do-nothing of it all. Watching TV while she slept on me. Letting whole days blur by. My body was still reeling from a C-section, and for the first time in my life, I was completely physically reliant on others. It was disorienting. A mind fuck, honestly. I do not miss that time.

Turtle energy and the slow burn

Somewhere in this haze, a friend mentioned “turtle energy.” You can guess the idea. Patient and steady progress etc. etc. The turtle’s slow and steady pace teaches us to embrace the journey. Little steps. Big results.

Ugh. Annoying. Not her, of course. The message. Slow and steady? Say it ain’t so!

My reaction of wanting to put my fingers in my ears like a child myself (I can’t hear you lalalala) is, of course, how I know it is a message meant for me.

Becoming the turtle

I’m trying to “turtle.” Every day I try. I remind myself that I am not wasting time when I do nothing but sit and rock my baby. This is it. This is life. This is everything. As we watch cars go by and lightning bugs fill the air, I remind myself that turtle time is still time. Still progress. Just taken new form.

And, slowly of course, something is shifting.

I say no to things I don’t actually want to do. (Imagine!) I resist the itch of impulse (the good fight I’ve been waging since getting sober). I defy Immediacy Culture — which art critic Anna Kornbluh writes about in her book “Immediacy, or the Style of Too Late Capitalism,” a heady tome I’ve been reading for months now (lol).

Because, ironically, it takes time to unlearn urgency.

Life, layer by layer

This shift shows up in the studio too. On weekends, when it’s just Alice and I, we make our way up there eventually. She watches. I paint. Kind of.

I’ve spent literal weeks just painting the fluorescent orange base of my next piece. One I originally (ha!) thought I’d finish by the end of June. But Alice and I, we’ve both grown to love the repetition. The rhythm. Layer after thin layer, this orange evolves. It is starting to glow.

I’ve always thought of orange as the color of a woman who knows your secret. Now, as Alice and I watch each coat transform the last one, I think maybe orange is the color of a woman who knows the secret:

To turtle it.

And to eat the marshmallow.

If you do life well, there will be time enough for both.