I have learned that it is normal to be sad when I see animals crushed on the roads where I live.
Snails, worms, or banana slugs attempt to make it across to the other side at the break of sunrise. I think about their efforts to cross the road and why they have to do it, at that time, early in the morning. The bottoms of their bodies suction themselves to the ground. I see the bords encircling them - mobile and agile in a way that leaves the ground.  There is so much death on the ground. People step on the snails, worms, and banana slugs. It takes a lot from me not to move them off the road to the side. If I do and even if I don’t I have already interfered with nature, by my existence in that space. Extended into the concrete I walk on and the freeway beside me, I am an interference with this nature and so the animals carry on as do I. 
On the freeway, I see rabbits, skunks, raccoons, cats, dogs, and even coyotes shuffled into themselves, creating a pink pile of bodily disorder. Since I was a child, it has never not affected me. When I was a child, it would make me cry. Sometimes, it still does, particularly when it compounds the other issues affecting me. Where it all starts and ends is beyond me, but I can understand how much space we take up and how quickly we move.
This comes from someone who feels like the external world around me is moving too fast, and I am constantly attempting to keep up. This is a practice of suppression, upholding fear, and inhabiting a strategy that many of us share. Regardless, the world is moving too fast for me and my shoulders are tense. The strategy I am most keen to at the moment is consuming less so I can work less. And, every morning I try to encourage my imagination by contemplating how I could survive without money is this world. I don’t know yet.
I know how to move fast because my parents taught me. It was shaped by the perceived work ethic of my parents who genuinely work extremely hard in competitive corporate environments. Both are in accounts payable management. I am so proud of them because the life and family they accomplished are not easy. It was not easy my any means to get my siblings and me to adulthood. But, they did it and I hope it guarantees a stable retirement. I want to take care of them in their older age because I do not see myself having children or getting married. It is hard to make them understand how certain my clarity is there. It’s just not in my future.
I move fast because I committed to a 13-year soccer career at 7 years old and “retired” due to a head injury at 20 years old. I attended an Ivy League University where for the first time in my life I failed classes miserably and stomached the reality of self-sacrifice to be conventionally successful post-graduation. 
I have worked 2+ jobs since I was 18. I truly have not had only 1 job since my start as a Student Caller and Service Worker at the Fitness Center at Brown University. I do not find any gratification in defining myself as a hard worker. It is my prerogative to work smart and not hard as I grow up. I had to “work hard” by larger forces and self-perceived longer-term goals, that may or may not have been real. As an artist I transform these experiences into my self and create something from our it makes me feel when looked at from a distance. Today, I manage 5+ clients at a time plus part-time jobs as a barista and preschool teacher, but it gives me a really beautiful life. 
What happens when you let a snail cross the road? One day I did this on the cliffs of Montara as an exercise. I stopped in my tracks and truly let him make it across the road. And so, it forced me to stand still. I looked to my left to see the ocean and took multiple deep breaths. I looked around and watched the cars pass on the freeway so incredibly close by. Then. my thoughts came and I pondered about forgotten fragments of things I intended to do that were gratifying and joy-inducing, not survival-related. I looked down and the snail wasn’t even halfway. So, I took another deep breath and thought some more.
Things flow when you relax and let go. 
To be in motion and to be still excites us in different ways. In many ways, I have learned to pay greater attention to my resistance to something rather than the act itself. Why do I want to resist being inside and why do I want to resist being inside. What is actually stake that I am attempting to preserve?