What I've Actually Changed (And What I'm Still Working On)
There's a version of slow living all over my feed right now, and I'll be honest: it makes me a little suspicious.
I started reading Yesteryear and it's a brilliant and somewhat controversial story of a right-wing tradwife influencer who has so deeply romanticized the pioneering Homesteading Era and then wakes up one day to find she has time traveled back to this actual era, and surprise surprise, it's not what she expected and she cannot quite cut it out on the farm. I'm not done, so no spoilers, but if you're reading it, I'd love your thoughts.
Why is this my feed? Do people really draw leaves and nuts in their journals? This aesthetic is not Downshifting for me.
It made me think about something important to the spirit of downshifting: are we slowing down, or are we flexing slowness in performance?
The images on my feed look like linen tablecloths and homemade candles and someone journaling in a sunlit kitchen at 9am on a Tuesday. It looks like a person who has "learned to say no" and "protects their peace" and has arrived, finally, at a life of intention. Good for them. I mean that sincerely. But I've started to notice that a lot of these stories have something in common that nobody mentions out loud: structural ease. A partner's income. A paid-off car. Parents who can watch the kids. The ability to outsource the things that eat your time. The slowness, in other words, is real. But it didn't come from a mindset shift. It came from having options.
I think about this a lot, because I'm in this space. I write about burnout. I believe deeply in the value of downshifting. And I'm also aware that some of what I recommend is easier to do if you're not working two jobs, if you're not a single parent, if you're not one bad month away from real financial stress. The "intentional life" conversation has a class problem, and I don't see it discussed enough.
Research on the concept of “time poverty” bears this out: lower-income people report significantly less control over their time even when working equivalent hours, because of unpredictable scheduling, longer commutes, and caregiving without backup. The structural drag is real, and no amount of mindset work fixes it. And if I'm honest about my own downshifting — walking away from tenure and a rich and varied academic career — it happened entirely because I'm partnered to somebody with a career and salary that allowed us to take a risk.
So I want to try something different today. An honest audit. Not what slow living is supposed to look like, but what I've actually managed to change, and what still has me by the throat.
What has actually shifted: I'm more ruthless about what gets my attention on Sunday evenings. That time used to be colonized by anxiety about the week ahead, a low-grade dread that I'd dress up as "planning." I've also stopped performing busyness as a virtue, which took longer than I'd like to admit. When someone asks how I'm doing, I no longer lead with how slammed I am, and I've stopped using "tired" as a feeling word.
What still has me: the occasional overscheduling the kids, the creating work and getting stuck in urgency that I need to pull myself out of, the overfunctioning on impulse rather than necessity. I don't aspire to eradicate all of this, because downshifting for the sake of downshifting is also inauthentic, but it's a useful self-check to acknowledge where my instincts still take me. And it turns out there's a neurological reason this is hard: people in chronic stress states often struggle to tolerate unstructured time because the nervous system has learned to read stillness as threat. The restlessness isn't a character flaw. It's a stress response that got very good at its job. The response then, is to create feelings of safety to make space for slowness. Still working on that one too.
Here's what I keep coming back to. For people who can't fully opt out, which is most people, the question isn't "how do I build a slower life." It's "given the constraints I actually have, what are the real choices available to me?" And there are some. They're just smaller and less photogenic than the pictures suggest.
The 20-minute walk you take instead of doomscrolling through lunch. The email you wait to respond to because there's no real urgency. The time gaps you don't always fill because sometimes space is a resource, not a problem to solve. None of this fixes the structural stuff. But it is real, and it compounds.
So, your downshifting journal prompt for today is your own honest audit.
What’s one thing about your pace and process that you’ve actually Downshifted?
What’s still got you that you actually want to work on?
I think the most honest thing I can say is this: I'm somewhere in the middle. I've changed enough to feel the difference, and I'm still constrained enough to feel the gap between what I believe and what I can fully live. I think I'll always be in this tension a bit, and perfection has never appealed to me, but honesty has. I suspect a lot of you are in that same middle place, and I'd rather talk about that than pretend the linen tablecloth aesthetic is available to everyone.
Misc. Musings: Farewell Edition
*Farewell to the inimitable Stephen Colbert, our comedian with a conscience. Over a decade ago, my husband and I went to see The Colbert Report. My husband was selected to ask him a question in the moments before taping, and he asked, “You satirize politicians brilliantly, do you ever worry that at some point, somebody will come after you about it?” and he laughed and responded, “Nah, I’m just a silly old comedian telling jokes.” He signed off this Thursday and thanks us for being in a “reciprocal emotional relationship.”
*Farewell to The Boys, weird, wonderful and violent Marvel satire that was far too on the nose about our social and political world. It was an imperfect show, and I loved it.
*Farewell to Maycember (parents, I know you feel me) and onward to “moving up” season.