Too much of something good is still too much

On why slow living is a thief, and how I’m reclaiming what it’s taken

(This voiceover is an audio version of the newsletter below. It’s unedited, and today you can hear my slightly flu-ey voice and maybe my dogs snoring. If you like/need to listen to these posts I hope you enjoy it regardless!)

Photo by SIMON LEE on Unsplash

Over the course of nearly eight years, I was lucky enough to have hundreds of conversations about slow living for The Slow Home Podcast (RIP). I interviewed authors and doctors, parents and farmers, psychologists and meditation practitioners, people who carried their rubbish around for weeks, people who stopped wearing shoes, people who swore off money, people who made all their own clothes. Homesteaders, tiny house dwellers, urbanites, permanent nomads, off-gridders and people who made their home in a house in the suburbs.

To a guest, I appreciated them all. They delivered passion and insight, and it was a very rare conversation that didn’t see me walk away with a new perspective on what slow living could, and perhaps should entail.

And while I learnt and grew so much, those eight years of conversations also hurt me. They left me feeling heavy and cumbersome. As though I had chipped off a little bit of every guest and glued it on to myself, slowly morphing into some mosaic-skinned character called Slow Living Woman.

Is it a bird? No! Is it a plane? No! It’s Slow Living Woman and she’s a minimalist / sustainability warrior / DIY-er / suburban homesteader / slow traveller / plastic-free shopper / thrifting extraordinaire / meditator / gardener / barefoot bushwalker / nap evangelist / anti-social-media champion / really f*cking tired!

Photo by Vadim Bogulov on Unsplash

My experimentations with slow living had started out by removing things from my life. Excess stuff and expectations of busyness and unnecessary stress and strain and tension.  And for years, it worked so beautifully. I learnt about myself, I uncovered things, I explored and grew and created and evolved and loved even the painful parts.

But somewhere along the way, it became additive. I stopped taking things away from my life and began adding them instead. I created a new, unrealistic set of standards for myself, full of new shoulds, more items on my to-do list, extra considerations when doing the groceries, buying kids shoes, planning Christmas gifts, looking at how I was going to earn money, what conversations I would and wouldn’t have, what opportunities I could or couldn’t say yes to.

All fuelled by my desire to constantly improve at slow living, which in turn was being fuelled by the beautiful depth and breadth of what slow living can be.

On top of that, there were the things I felt I was no longer allowed to do, to want, or enjoy. I often felt trapped, paralysed, overwhelmed. There was tension in every choice, no matter how much I tried to align it with what I thought was right and good. Suddenly it felt like there were so many things I couldn’t do.

I couldn’t promote my work without huge levels of shame because so much of slow living revolves around the idea that capitalism sucks.

I couldn’t enjoy the holiday we saved for years to have because someone had told me that nobody should ever fly again.

I couldn’t stand up for myself in negotiations because I had absorbed the idea that slow living was about being laid back and easy going.

I couldn’t earn money from the things I created because slow living should be freely accessible to everyone.

I couldn’t get angry because someone once told me to pursue inner peace.

I couldn’t buy things, even if I needed them, because I could, possibly, potentially, maybe if there were 100 hours in a day, make my own, or source a second-hand one, or find one that’s been made ethically.

I couldn’t express frustration or displeasure at parts of my life because I was told that gratitude was the best tool to minimise negative feelings.

I couldn’t work when I wanted to because if I replied to an email or message “too quickly” or outside acceptable business hours, people would assume I was attached to my phone.  

I couldn’t work how I wanted because even an intentional period of busyness in service of rest felt antithetical to slow living.

I couldn’t do things I enjoyed, like play video games or watch Marvel movies, because they weren’t earthy enough, slow enough, non-conformist enough.

I couldn’t spend money: capitalism!

I couldn’t not spend money: privilege! Share the wealth! Support small businesses!

It was, in a word, exhausting. But I kept it in, jammed it down, ignored the things I wanted and needed, and over time, the very idea of slow living that I had fallen in love with became this bitter, twisted ghost of itself. Something I resented, something I blamed for the things I could no longer do, the things I could no longer enjoy.

Photo by Misak Aghababyan on Unsplash

Of course, the blame doesn’t lie with slow living. If anything, the blame lies with comparison, with people-pleasing, with not calling to mind my own advice of knowing why I was doing something. The blame also lies with the all-or-nothing approach I brought with me to slow living. I carried in my own hubris and embedded ideas of hustle and perfection and achievement and outcome-oriented thinking and tried to apply them to slowness. When slow is, by its very nature, not those things.

Slow is the spectrum along which we exist. It’s fluidity and grace and imperfect action and letting go of standards. It’s stepping back, opting out, questioning and noticing. It’s quite literally the journey.

Spurred by professional setbacks and chronic health issues and some pretty challenging personal stuff, the past couple of years have been a gradual dissolving of the glue that held Slow Living Woman together, and I have relaxed — a lot.

It’s been nice to simply let go of others’ definitions of slow. Freeing to recognise that certain elements of slow just don’t apply to me anymore; if they ever did. And above all, a delight to re-engage with slowness — that life-shifting idea I fell in love with so many years ago — in a way that works for who I am now.

Slow is not as earnest or hard-edged as it used to be. It’s more fun. More creative and forgiving and gentle. It asks better questions and expects fewer answers. It comes and goes. It is both the thing that gets me through hard days and the first thing to be cast aside, like a comfy cardigan on a warm spring day — it will be there when I need it again. Most of the time it lives in the messy middle of life, which, I’ve realised, is exactly how I like it.

Because life is compromise. Existing and working and hoping and creating in a highly capitalistic society is compromise. Relationships with neighbours and friends and partners and siblings and strangers are compromise. Love is compromise.

For a while, that felt like a roadblock — something to be overcome or puzzled out. But more recently it feels like an invitation. An offer to stop and look around. And it’s in that space that I’m rediscovering so much of what I had given over to slowness.

I was going to leave it at that, but I wanted to briefly let you know what the practicalities of this slow shift have looked like. Because while I think it’s important to think about these things in a theoretical way, it’s possibly just as helpful to look at how we might actually start making changes in a practical sense.

For me, the gradual unravelling of this particular knot has included a combination of:

• Simplifying and redefining what slow means to me, for now

• Saying no to comparison

• Reimagining how slow could be part of my life, as opposed to my identity

• Focusing on how it feels rather than how it looks

• Returning to my values, over and over.

It’s a process, for sure, and very much non-linear. And I’m sure I’ll look back at this time and realise it’s also part of a larger process of learning and growing and evolving. I’m glad of it. And also glad to be moving past it, you know?

So tell me, do you feel like you’ve ever given too much of yourself to an idea, a movement or an -ism?

I’m currently…

Feeling grateful for this community, that kept sharing and commenting and encouraging each other while I was away, and while I battled a nasty bout of the flu. Thank you for being here and being so awesome.

Taking things fairly easy as I keep recovering from said flu.

Working on a new thing for The Tortoise – a slow living resources page, which will include blogs, websites, services etc that might help others looking to slow down. I’m currently collating writers, bloggers and Substackers who cover slow living or slow-adjacent topics, so if you have any suggestions, please let me know.

Looking at a stack of receipts I need to claim via health insurance after spending over an hour pulling together results for a new doctor. I swear, health-related admin is a literal job. (And funnily enough, this is related to another thing I’m working on — a set of slow living/chronic health conditions planners that I think will help with this. More to come in a little while).

Hoping to get out into the garden this weekend.

Here’s to a slow weekend (whatever that means to you) and as much love and care as you can handle.
Brooke xx