Is it slow? Or is it living?

Sometimes, it's gotta be one or the other

(This voiceover is an audio version of the newsletter below. As always, it’s unedited, and today you might hear me making spelling fixes on the fly! If you like/need to listen to these posts I hope you enjoy it anyway!)

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Mates, I’m not going to lie. It’s been one of those weeks. You know the ones. Where despite our best efforts and all good, slow-living intentions, it’s just busy.

I’ve got three deadlines coming before the weekend and spent all day yesterday in the city at a clinic I’d been waiting months to get into. We have a football presentation night and two soccer games on the weekend, friends coming to visit and family coming for coffee and cake.

And they’re all good, positive, and mostly wonderful things. There’s just a lot of them, all piled up on top of one another. And it feels so easy — expected almost — to see that pile of things and decide that what it really needs is… more added to it.

My mind goes to the fact that it’s now spring and the garden needs attention, the windows need washing, the fridge could do with a clear out, the pantry too for that matter. The front of the cabinets in the kitchen are a bit grubby, the spare bedroom needs a deep clean (before Friday) and while I’m at it, I’m fairly certain the curtains need a wash. Like, all of them.  

It’s as though my brain sees the barely contained fullness of the week and thinks, Crocodile Dundee-style, “You call that busy? THIS is busy.”

I’m not sure why we do it, but it seems to be at least in part due to human nature. Some kind of self-sabotage maybe. I also think it’s part of the capitalist machine we live in — the one that tells us our value is tied to our output, and that people who don’t burn the candle at both ends (and the middle if you really want to get ahead) just aren’t trying hard enough. It’s the same machine that has implanted impossible standards of home and work and beauty and relationships into our brains, all the while telling us that if we’re failing at any one of those it’s because, again, we’re just not putting our back into it.

I’ve written for more than a decade about actively pushing back on all of this, learning how to joyfully flip the bird to standards and expectations and status quo bullshit, but it’s still very much an active practise of opting out. And like any practise, some days I’m better at it than others.

However, in a sign that I am, in fact, learning things, and we can change the habits of a lifetime one tiny choice at a time, this week I’m actively encouraging myself to let go of those extras. If things need doing, I’ll do them. (The garden really does need watering, or else all my newly emerged seedlings will dry up in the warm spell we’re having). But the things I’ve added to that list out of fear, unrealistic standards, status-quo-maintenance or someone else’s expectations? Gone. Every morning when I write out my day’s to-do list, I actively choose to put them to the side and say, “Not today.” Then I look at the rest of my WIP list and add, “And probably not tomorrow either.”

Instead, I’m meeting this full week with a cliched but ultimately very helpful mantra:

One thing at a time.

That is, I’m quite literally only doing the thing in front of me. I’m not letting my eyes lift too far towards the horizon where I will see the tasks lined up one after the other like ships waiting at port. I’m just working through what needs doing right now. Then I’ll move on to the next thing.

To be honest, I wasn’t going to post this. I have mentioned before how much I dislike talking about being busy, out of fear that it will somehow normalise the hustle and grind culture that I push back on so often.

But the truth is that there are two distinct parts to slow living.

The first being slowness. The intention, the spaciousness, the buffer we create in our lives by letting go of things that aren’t important to us.

It’s crucial and ever-evolving and so often the conversation stops there.

But the second part of slow living is the living part.

That’s how we show up in our days. All of our days. Not just the spacious airy days. Not just the days that might be mistaken for an Instagram photo, all dusty light and loose neutral linens.

I might argue that most of our days are not and never will be like that, so the weight of the living part of slow living needs to apply to the shitty days and the painfully normal days and the entirely forgettable days. The days where I drive straight past the turn-off to Randwick and call Ben in tears because I’m going to miss a long-awaited appointment. (Ahem.) Or the days where nothing goes right and the milk is off and I realise the lemon tree is dead because I just… didn’t water it. Or the days where everything gets done and nothing seems to happen.

Slow living is as much, if not more, about how we meet those days. They may not look slow or beautiful or anything special at all, but they are adding up to a life. They’re the only way we can build one.

Life is so much more than the special days or the weeks that all our best-laid plans come to fruition. And living? It’s about how we show up in all of it.

Definitely not a butterfly, but still beautiful.

I’m Currently

Noticing so many signs of spring. Yes, it’s warmer and the days are getting longer, but I’ve also seen at least three different species of butterfly in the garden this week. Nothing makes my heart sing like a butterfly in the garden.

Recording next week’s plodcast episode. It’s going to be a good one, all about living seasonally and what that actually means.

Looking for a simple crowd-pleasing dessert for this weekend. If you’ve got something that will feed a crew of 8 (4 adults, 4 kids) let me know!

Sipping sleepy tea at 3pm. Like a badass.

Heading outside to water the garden as soon as I’ve finished this letter. It’s the first of the warm days and Kate said something in this week’s Bowerbird letter that put warm nights and spring smells in mind and now I can’t shake them.

“Maybe it felt like a kind of devotion last night when I stopped in the dark evening between my studio and the front door because - my God - the scent of the jasmine flowers - on this first warm evening, smelling of anticipation and summer nights and laughter and swishy dresses…”

With all that in mind, I hope you have a wonderful rest of your week. Take your time and, if it all feels like a lot, keep your eyes off the horizon. Instead, just move through things one moment at a time. It’s the only way we can.

Brooke xx