Let's take it nice and slow
My thoughts on embracing 'slow living' when actually all I really need to do is staring me right in the face
Good afternoon Saturday-people. It’s been a number of weeks - oooof, shall we just leave it at ‘a fair few’ - since I last wrote to you. I wish I had a brilliant and intriguing story to tell you; casting me in with ‘main character energy’, an excitingly multi-faceted adventurer type who just hasn’t quite managed to get a moment to open the laptop and engage with the substackian underworld.
But that would be a lie. I’m still me, living my small life in my small hometown in rural Dorset.
Right now I’m tired. I know this from the distinct lack of fucks I currently give about anything which doesn’t involve quietly sitting on the sofa. I care deeply about being on my sofa, preferably without the background strains of back-to-back american sitcoms but this isn’t make or break so long as there is a warm nest of blanket, hot water bottle, food and something to read.
A few weeks ago, on said sofa, I read an interesting article in The Saturday Times about ‘slow living’. Don’t judge my reading choices; I love Caitlin Moran, Robert Crampton and the easy to digest financial advice section, this doesn’t make me a Tory.
Alas, I moved altogether tooo slow to save the article from recycling, but the gist of the piece was around finding ways to lessen the pace in your everyday life. Doing less overall, prioritising where and how you spend your energy and appreciating what you already have.
For instance, beginning the day with a crossword over breakfast instead of grabbing your phone to scroll as soon as your head lifts from the pillow. Taking time to walk in nature, putting a stop to mindless low level consumerism, making meals from scratch, meditating. Ditching your corporate job to make candles in the countryside with your husband.
All completely do-able.
At the time I read the article I felt low energy and stressed, despite the sofa time. As a family we were wearily coming out the other side of SATs, GCSEs and a possibly-more-lengthy-than-it-ever-needed-to-be end of year project. Stolidly pushing through the days until our hallelujah summer holiday, staring into a diary packed full of peopling and activity in the meantime.
No time to take a nap, cook nourishing food or light a candle, let alone make and sell any.
And I thought, slow living sounds nice. Slow living sounds like the kind of thing I’d like to do. One day. When there’s less ‘stuff’ going on.
I mentally put a pin in it and carried on getting through June.
Then at some point in the week following this article, I had a moment and thought “let’s look into this slow living a bit more and see how it’s done”.
Saturday-people, slow living is a whole industry - forgive me if you knew this already. There are any number of influencers, blogs, books and lifestyle vlogs expounding on ways to bring this essential strand of 'wellness’ into your life. Most important of all, it appears, is to buy a candle/wellness download/meditation app to help you on your way.
Yet, there are also some interesting articles, with good commonsense tips such as:
Start the day in nature
Slow down your commute to work
Regularly switch off from your tech, turn off notifications
Cook slow tasty meals
Be intentional in how you spend your time
Remove the excess from life - activities, objects and people
Write it all down, get the thoughts out of your brain and onto paper
I stop and take a good look at my little small-town life. Dog walks top and tail the day, my commute to (very un-corporate) work is on foot, notifications are pretty much always off on my phone and we generally eat well, bar the odd (weekly) beige freezer meal.
“Be intentional” this ones harder and doesn’t always feel much of a choice but possibly one day, I’ll get back to you on that one. I’d love to de-clutter the excess and that one’s been on my to-do list for a while, I’ve earmarked this for the couple days of leave coming up soon. Perhaps I’ll indulge in some time to really think, while I’m at it.
Write it out…writing… Oh, I see.
My life is slow, my brain is fast. Especially when I’m overtired.
What’s the one thing missing from my routine in the past month? So easily discarded amongst the packed weekends, I thought I didn’t have the time or space to create space with words when actually it’s what my busy brain has needed all along.
Halfway through writing this substack I went out for a walk with the family; through the hilltop trees, down into town to stop for ice-cream in the drizzle, a meander through the supermarket for something for tea, then bumping into friends and stopping for an impromptu afternoon drink on the pavement.
It looked like this…
Thank you for reading this far, I’m grateful to everyone who reads my column. Turns out life isn’t so very busy after all, and slow is already my default setting.
I don’t need a candle, but I definitely do need to substack.
One final thing I was so sorry to hear the news of Michael Moseley’s death last week, as you might remember his podcasts really resonated with me and I always enjoyed his easy to follow suggestions for better health. He sounded like a brilliant bloke.