A German train station, a cup of coffee, and what happens when you stop running long enough to actually see.
I’m sitting in my home studio this morning with a first cup of coffee going cold beside me. Penny the cat just interrupted this sentence… several insistent meows, a brief chase around the desk, a few kisses on the top of her head before she squirmed free… and now she’s back in her window hammock, basking in the morning light like she invented the concept.
She wanted a few moments. That’s all. And she got them, because that’s the deal we have.
It occurs to me that this is what slowing down actually looks like. Not a meditation retreat. Not a month in Tuscany. Just the willingness to stop mid-sentence when something worth noticing asks you to.
Munich. Early Morning. 1992.
I remember the first time I understood this.
I was backpacking through Europe in my late thirties… the kind of trip you take on a budget so tight that a nine-dollar overnight couchette on a train isn’t just economical, it’s the whole adventure. You fall asleep somewhere in France and wake up in Germany, and for a few minutes you genuinely don’t know where you are, and that feeling is worth every franc you spent.
I’d arrived into Munich’s main station early. Too early for the tourist office to open, too early to find a room, too early for anything except the café right there on the platform with the pastries in the display case that caught my eye before I’d even pulled my pack off my shoulders.
This was before cell phones. Before you could fill every idle moment with a screen. You just sat there, with your coffee and your pastry, and you had no choice but to be present.
The station was chaos. Businessmen moving fast, other travelers dragging luggage, announcements echoing off the tile in three languages, the smell of diesel and coffee and something baking somewhere deeper in the building. A full-on production – lights, sound, extras – happening all around me.
And then I noticed the light.
Morning sun coming through the high station windows at a low angle, warm and golden, cutting through the steam rising from my coffee cup. Just for a moment, thirty seconds, maybe… the cup, the steam, and that shaft of light were the only things in the frame. Everything else blurred into background noise.
I didn’t have a camera good enough to capture it. I just watched it happen.
That moment has stayed with me for thirty years. Not because it was dramatic. Because it wasn’t. Because it was the kind of thing that only exists for the people who aren’t in a hurry.
What Fast Looks Like
For most of my career, fast was the operating mode. Warehouse studios. Crew calls at dawn. Cross-country flights for load-ins. Clients on the phone before I’d finished my first cup of coffee — the real one, not the one I was actually tasting.
I moved through a lot of places in those years. I can’t tell you what most of them smelled like.
There’s a version of this new chapter I’m building where I recreate that same pace… just with national parks instead of pharmaceutical conferences. Chasing content, filling a calendar, rushing from park to park to get the posts up. I’m aware of the irony. I’m working on it.
Deliberate pacing is something I have to choose, every day, on purpose. It doesn’t come naturally to someone who spent four decades in production. But it’s the whole point of what I’m doing out here.
What I’m Actually Paying Attention To
Here’s what I’ve noticed about slowing down: it’s not passive. It’s not relaxation. It’s a different kind of attention… active, curious, looking for the thing inside the thing.
Right now, from my desk, I can see the light on the wall behind the plant on the balcony. When the sun is unfiltered it throws hard shadows… sharp edges, high contrast, every leaf defined. When clouds move in, the whole scene softens. The shadows go diffuse. The same plant looks like a different photograph.
Most people don’t notice that. I can’t not notice it. Thirty seconds of observation tells you everything about the quality of light available to you, and whether it’s worth picking up a camera.
That’s what Field Notes is for. The small things. The thirty-second observations. The moments that don’t make the highlight reel but make the journey mean something.
Penny has fallen asleep in her window hammock. The coffee is officially cold. The light on the wall just shifted as a cloud moved through.
I noticed all three of those things at the same time. That’s enough for a morning.
Slow down long enough to see what’s actually there.
— Michael
