Slow Living: Where Did My Journey Begin?

Opening the first perfect-white blank page of a new notebook or journal is one of life’s great joys. Each page waits expectantly as an empty vessel, waiting to be filled. Blank pages can also be filled with trepidation. What happens if we make a mistake? Will we ruin that brand new notebook? Will we be able to live with our crossings-out?

This first journal entry feels a little bit like that too. If you’ve opened my journal for the very first time, then you are very welcome, and with a hush of silent expectation, I hope that you will enjoy your journey of turning the pages alongside me.

Slow living. Simple living. Seasonal living.

In many respects, these three are inextricably linked. I know now that they have always been part of me, even if it took several decades, and the magic of the online world for me to realise it.

I say they’ve always been part of me, but having searched the old fashioned index of slightly dog-eared cards, otherwise known as my brain, I feel that I can pinpoint the time when my journey began, the journey which has brought so much joy and wonder, some pertinent challenges, and which has led us here today.

It all began with a book.

I can’t remember where the book came from, but like many, I suspect it was a spur-of-the-moment charity shop purchase. The book is a little worn, perhaps discarded by its previous reader, but where one person’s journey ended, another’s begins.

The Garden Cottage Diaries by Fiona Houston was my first signpost on the journey towards a slower, simpler and more seasonal life.

Houston was challenged to prove her claim that people ate better two hundred years ago. This book tells the story of an extraordinary experiment in which she immersed herself for a full calendar year in the rural lives of her 1790s ancestors.

“She wore home-made clothes, ate from her garden, learned lost crafts and skills, and endured dark, cold winter nights with only her fire and candles for warmth and light.”

That quote is really at the heart of how A Life More Creative came into being: a means to reconnect with the past in a way which offers us a more solid foundation for the present.

I’m sure that you too would echo my desire to live as Houston did for a year, or possibly even on a more permanent basis, but for most of us, that isn’t a feasible option. But I am convinced that many of the trials and tribulations we face in today’s fast-paced world have come about because we have severed the connections with our roots.

We are, quite literally, out of touch, not with the world today, but ironically, with the world of our shared past.

It’s a beautiful, heart-warming book, but it isn’t without challenge. What’s changed in the past 200 years? On the one hand, everything has changed. On the other, the challenges we face today would be just as familiar to our ancestors.

Reading The Garden Cottage Diaries opened my eyes to the possibilities of the past. It rekindled in me a connection with that which has been lost. It helped me see the present through new eyes.

But, just like me, we’re on a journey. We don’t have all the answers, and nor can we ever expect to find them. What we can do is to keep turning the pages, to keep discovering, and to keep exploring.

I will resist writing more about this pivotal signpost on my slow living journey because if you can seek out a copy, I’m sure you will all the enjoy reading about Houston’s year in the 18th Century as much as I did.

Let the journey begin.