I took my second coffee of the day outside. 

This already felt like a transgression.

Coffee is for optimizing. One takes it to think faster, type faster, stay focussed, be more on. So, it felt radical to not carry it back to my desk, where work and wakefulness and focus-needs awaited – to wander, instead, by a nearby creek, mug in hand, phone left behind. 

I had a Moment. I won’t describe it because everybody hates the long boring descriptive nature bits in novels and skims ahead to get to more plot. Plot intruded soon enough: my Stupid Brain said, well that’s more than enough peaceful communing and enjoying yourself. Better get to work now. Put some hustle into it.

Hasn’t everything been shaped, from the earliest time, thus? Into a race? You start swimming, and then as you get better, they say, okay, do it in a lane, and line up against someone, and see how fast you can go. You go to school, and they say, okay, now we’re going to test your comprehension and engagement, so we’ll set a timer and you have to answer these questions before the time runs out.  It’s fine if you enjoy these things, but it’s even finer if you’re faster and better than everyone else.

So. Much. Racing.

And not nearly enough sitting in the garden with a cup of tea writing poems in your head. Or floating on your back in the water. Or strolling around the outskirts of the work day in the company of a furry friend. Or taking a delicious pause by a small pool, that is also taking a pause in its creek journey from mountain top to ocean, enjoying a little side quest being a pool, instead of a thing on a mission, bent on its ultimate existential obliteration. 

Back in January, I declared slow-maxxing to be my word for this year. We’re over-halfway through 2026, the wheel of the year has hovered for a second like a PNE ride at the top and is slowly tipping over. The gut plummet moment is imminent. For now, it’s time to drop away what you are done with. (Get ready to hold on.) In other words: your resolutions or goals or ambitious seed purchase or word of the year, have either served you, or are park litter. 

I pick mine back up and contemplate it. 

The first principle of slow-maxxing is: “Slow-maxxers do not rush to get through the good bits. When we notice something delicious, potent, enjoyable, we linger, we notice, we try to take a full body snapshot for the memory banks.” (I was really trying to set myself up for success.)

But really, what I was pointing myself at was the idea that my life’s texture matters more than any of its accomplishments or outputs. So cultivate that.

The other day, digging through my archives for photos from the Whistler Writing Society’s early days, for their 25th Festival celebration this fall, I found a photo of the late Kevin Damaskie. Kevin was one of the original founders of the Pique back in 1994, alongside Kathy and Bob Barnett and David Rigler. A witty and fast-minded writer, he had moved to Whistler in 1992, chasing powder and kickstarting a budding journalism career. He worked as a reporter at the Whistler Question, helped design and launch Pique Newsmagazine, and wrote for Powder, Skier and Ski Canada. He lived up and down the corridor – Whistler, Squamish, Pemberton, worked as a Sustainability Coordinator for the RMOW, a meat cutter for Pemberton Valley Supermarket, ran for office for Area C Director for the SLRD, and experimented with being a garlic farmer, and a small farmer. But he was never his jobs. Kevin Damaskie was a vibe.

I remember going for lunch with him, once, and I shared my latest harebrained scheme. I know I would have spent so much of my life energy (NO TIME FOR CREEK GAZING! Projects to usher forth! Deadlines! Hustle!) implementing that thing, and now, 15 years later, I have no idea whatsoever what would have been consuming me. All that I remember is the texture of that conversation with Kevin, his creative enthusiasm and encouragement. His unbridled, “you should go for it” (whatever the heck it was.) A 10 second gift of enthusiasm versus hundreds of hours of effort… and what have I retained?

When I learned of his death in 2021, I remember thinking with startling clarity: none of “the work”, the resume stuff, matters. It disappears like smoke and vapour. All that endures is the texture, which might distill down to one single exchange with a person, like the imprint of fingers into soft clay, and how it made me feel.

Dancing at the downtown Pemberton barn last month, in honour of Liam and Riva Fisher and the fund that has been started up in their names, to make Pemberton more connected, healthy and creative, I marvelled at the work their parents Hillary and Hugh have done to transmute loss into something connective, textured, regenerative, hopeful. 

“I want their story to continue,” Hillary Downing shared with me. She is mothering something new here, which makes my heart hurt because I don’t imagine she was looking for something else to mother, than her own two grown-up children, their circles of friends and loved ones and furballs, and their beautiful futures.  But in the wake of that lost path of being able to watch them live their adult lives, something richly textured is being shepherded into being, shaped tenderly into the kind of imprints that linger on after an open air live community hoe-down. Just like grief is love, with no place to go, slow-maxxing is really love-maxxing, in another dress.

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There’s still almost six months to this year, it’s not too late to try your hand at slow-maxxing. Stop to talk to flowers or a body of water or a stranger and tell them how pretty they are (in a non-creepy way. Please don’t be a stalker and quote me as your inspiration.) Let things steep. To bring out the full flavour.  And then allow yourselves to savour it. This is slow-maxxing 2026. This could be your summer mission.