What helps me live a slow life
Recently I've been thinking so much about slow living. For many years I've been trying to live more slowly and become more aware of my patterns of overwork. Because overworking was not consuming stuff, at times I felt that I was doing nothing wrong. My research focuses on post-growth, so I thought that overworking in this case was ok. Realising how detrimental overwork and busyness (and their normalisation and glorification) are felt like waking up. While stepping on a path of spiritual growth and minimalism 15 or so years ago was more akin to a process for me, giving up working hard (read: overwork, overcommitment, overperformance, normalisation of busyness) felt like an abrupt shift, awakening.
Of course many things were leading up to this shift. For example, in the past months my colleague, my partner and I were working on a joint article about transformations in academia. I also wrote my first editorial for Environmental Values where slow academia was one of the themes I wanted to highlight. I've seen so many emails from my fellow humans in academia, sent late at night or on the weekends, mentioning how busy they were. These days, many fellow humans have autoreplies stating that they are busy and that it might take them a while to respond. I feel it puts pressure on others to create similar autoreplies, as everyone is busy. I decided to dive deeper into my own patterns and reasons for overworking. I also noticed that I get so much more done when I work much less. My co-author (and partner) and I noticed that even though since we moved in together we spend fewer hours working, we are happy with what we have created and we've completed everything we wanted to complete. But evenings, weekends, holidays, and days when I feel tired or need time for myself are sacred for me now. During these times I invest my energy in healing and being present with the self, or human and non-human others, or nature.
Like many fellow humans in academia, I always thought I had to work hard to achieve something. I've never worked with big names, never liked networking and never invested my time in it. I wanted to pursue authenticity and give myself permission to work with whomever I genuinely like to work, to step away when something felt wrong (such as plagiarism, harassment, abuse, unfair treatment). I've always been open about working together with my partner, and we have enjoyed it immensely, despite fellow academics' advice to avoid disclosing it or even to avoid working together.
Working slowly, especially in combination with working your own way, comes with financial consequences. I want to write down what helps me, while also recognising that every human's situation is different. Here, since it's an autoethnography, I discuss my own experiences. Though over the year of doing autoethnography, I notice that fellow humans recognise themselves in some, or even many, of my experiences, and this is why autoethnography is valuable and beautiful.
Extreme minimalism helps. In academia, I always earned more than I needed. Some of it I donated, but I also saved some of the money for periods of unemployment. Finance was never the reason why I stepped on my path of minimalist living. My reasons are ecological, aesthetic, spiritual and health-related. But spending less allowed me to, for instance, work for a year and take a year off. My partner's practice of minimalism also helps. He practices minimalism for ecological reasons. Spending less overall means that we could live on one academic wage (mine or his).
Practising minimalism doesn't feel like a sacrifice. We live with what we genuinely need and like. We spend more on the areas of consumption that are important to us (living in a safe area, buying organic food, using public transport that is expensive here in Denmark). We spend nothing on things that don't matter to us or that would make our life less pleasant. For example, we don't buy occasion clothing (or seasonal, or fashion clothing), jewellery, seasonal items, holiday décor, home décor, foreign travel (apart from rare occasions when we travel by train for a conference), kitchen equipment, cleaning products (apart from soap and baking soda), makeup and gender and age specific skincare, multiples (e.g., something we like in many colours), souvenirs, tools that we can borrow easily from family and friends. We do not own a car. Being introverted means we love spending time with each other or on our own. We don't go out much. We find so much joy in simple, everyday activities such as cooking, spending time with my partner's child, spending time with nature, walking, reading, writing, talking. We pursue harmony and authenticity in our life and do not want to live like anyone else.
If we wanted to live more normal lives (i.e., what is normal for our area), we would need to own a car, a house, consume much more, travel abroad more often and further away. We would need two academic wages, and even that would probably not be enough. At times, we talk about having a child together. It's not impossible to live as a family on one academic wage, but that means (providing there is no financial support or inheritance) living a simple and slow life.
Above, there is a picture of a linen bag. The bag is made from French linen, in Europe. Recently, I've been using it as a laundry bag, and it currently has most of my wardrobe in it. I've written rather a lot about my extremely minimalist wardrobe in this autoethnography. I often think that I would need much more money if I lived with a more normal wardrobe.
