Over the summer we have made a conscious effort to slow down and enjoy time with our friends and whānau. We also wanted to enjoy our place, Āhuru Mōwai, the sheltered haven we’ve worked so hard to create.

Mark is the most energetic, productive person I’ve ever met. He’s constantly planning his next project, and always has several on the go. From building our woodshed, to developing our syntropic food forest, to maintaining the systems that keep our property running.

Besides this he works full time for an international consulting company and has multiple side hustles including a podcast, a mentoring challenge and contract work.

Late last year I decided to leave my job at Google to work for our digital enablement business. Mark has been helping me with that transition to self-employed consultant too, both by helping me shape my development strategy and by taking the lead with our kids so that I can have the headspace to focus on work.

Rest isn’t something that comes naturally to him, luckily for him it does for me – so we’ve been helping each other. I believe that rest can be productive, and for Mark it’s important to frame it that way so that he feels like he can stop.

I’ve loved seeing him do this a bit more over the summer, especially with our toddlers. There’s nothing better than a slow morning at home, playing with them or watching them play with each other. Sometimes we get up early and head to our local ocean beach, and others we mooch around home and head outside to explore.

There’s been some interesting insights thanks to this decision to slow down. For the first time in years, monthly weed spraying was one job that got missed over the summer break. Our goal is to get to the point where we don’t use synthetic sprays anywhere on our property. However, until we have got our diverse ecosystem flourishing, we choose to use it as part of our maintenance plan.

It’s been warm and wet, so as expected, the weeds thrived in the absence of spray. What we didn’t expect was to see flowers start to pop up in surprising places. Poppies growing right out of the metal from seeds dropped by last year’s plants that we’d struggled to cultivate. This year, with no effort at all, they’re blooming.

I’ve decided to dedicate Sunday blogs to sharing some of the ways we’re slowing down this year. It’s a cliche for a reason, but there’s something to the idea of enjoying the journey instead of always focusing on the destination.