Endings and beginnings

and why we're calling time on the poggie

(This voiceover is an audio version of the newsletter below. If you need or prefer to get your info via audio, I hope it’s helpful. Please note it is unedited, so includes life noises and word stumbles, and all sorts of stuff.)

Hello! I’m popping in early this week to let you know there’s a new episode of The Slow Home Podcast out today. And, well… it’s going to be the last one.

(This post was meant to come out tomorrow, but to be honest I have felt very emotional all day so decided to put it out early.)

After more than 350 episodes, nearly eight years, over 8 million downloads, countless life-changing conversations and slow-living experiments, it’s time.

Beyond time, probably.

An early-2020 (?) photo of us pretending to record a podcast. Such a shame that we never have fun.

I remember writing a goals list back in 2014 that had “Start a podcast?” scrawled into the margins, and the off-the-cuff experiment that followed. I had no clue back then what the poggie would become. Or what it would come to mean – both to Ben and I, and to many of the people who have listened to it over the years.

For the better part of a decade, it marked the progression of our lives as we recorded episodes in our spare room, in libraries, in wardrobes and offices and campervans and countless Airbnb’s. And for years it represented expansion and curiosity and experimentation. It felt like a doorway and an invitation to walk through again and again as we figured out what it meant for us to live a slower life.

We went through so many iterations of ourselves while recording the poggie – from simplicity to minimalism to experimentation to nomadic living to entrepreneurship to podcast-network-start-up (remember that?) to long-term travel to relocating and starting over in a new town… The podcast opened us up to so many opportunities, and opportunities to evolve.

But over the past couple of years, there’s been a gradual shift. With the pandemic and health issues and family challenges, life was too full, too challenging, too overwhelming to pay close attention to that shift until recently, but now that we have, we see that what used to feel expansive now feels less so. What used to serve us well, no longer does.  

And to be honest, that’s just not a great place to be creating from. There are absolutely times in life where we need to keep going even when things stop working for us, but this isn’t one of them.

I’ve mentioned over the past few posts that I’m really embracing the idea of personal evolution, of allowing and inviting ourselves to change as needed, and while I wasn’t writing those posts about this change in particular, it doesn’t surprise me now to see that my head already knew what my heart needed a little extra time to come to terms with.

Namely: it’s time for something new.

Sunrise on the outskirts of Calgary. I can’t tell you how many life-shifting moments we’ve had on this road, so it feels fitting to use this photo now.

And it’s here, before we get into the final episode, that I want to tell you that Ben and I are not walking away from podcasting altogether. Truthfully, we both enjoy the process and what it uncovers far too much to do that.

We just need to find a way forward that feels expansive and more aligned with what slow living has come to mean to us nowadays. And as we talk about in today’s episode, that looks quite different to how it used to.

I hope you’ll join us as we move into the next chapter. We do talk a bit about what that will look like, but the beauty of it is that we don’t really know.

Moving forward, The Tortoise will be my online home, so I’m absolutely thrilled to have you here. If you haven’t already, be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss all the goodness I’ve got planned.

But for now, I want to leave you with the final ever episode of The Slow Home Podcast, and a massive, heartfelt thank you to every single person who has ever listened to, spoken about or shared an episode.

It takes a lot for me to say I’m proud of something I created, but I truly am proud of this thing that Ben and I made. Proud of the conversations we had, the changes we made, the work we did and the challenges we faced, but mostly, I’m proud of the community of slow-living oddballs we became a part of. To know there’s so many people looking for a different way to live, and making their best efforts to do it? That’s the best thing of all. Because I honestly think that’s how we change the world – one slow, powerful shift at a time.

So, here's the final ever episode of The Slow Home Podcast, for your listening pleasure.

(As always, you can also find the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher etc.)

In this episode we talk about:

• Why it’s time to move on

• How my health challenges have played a huge part in arriving at a new iteration of slow living

• What this new iteration looks like

• Why the humble tortoise feels like the perfect mascot for me these days

• My previous efforts of slow living in fast spurts

• My strained relationship with uncertainty

• Why we’re shifting towards a less edited style of podcasting and why it’s the antithesis of what the whole podcast scene has become

I hope you enjoy it! And I’ll see you back here real soon. (Probably tomorrow).
Brooke x

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Links mentioned in this episode:

• James Clear writes about continuous improvement

• A little more about the 1%

• Outdoors and unedited - A Hostful

• Natasha Lipman’s The Rest Room. She is taking an extended break right now, but this is where I first came across the idea of using 1% as a tool for navigating chronic health issues. I can’t find the exact post but can highly recommend a read of her archives if you or someone you love lives with a chronic health condition.

• How slow living can save you…in a zombie apocalypse

• An Interview with Ben

• Frugal Hedonism with Annie Raser-Rowland