Essays
This is a small site of essays about living more slowly, which is a phrase I have come to distrust and keep using anyway. I distrust it because it has been sold back to us as a set of purchases: the linen apron, the ceramic pour-over, the weekend retreat with a timetable. None of that is slowness. Most of it is the same hurry wearing softer colours.
What I mean by it is duller and cheaper. It is noticing how long a thing actually takes and then allowing it that long. It is the nine minutes the kettle needs, the two seasons a hedge needs, the year a friendship needs after it has been neglected. Almost everything I have written here is a version of that one observation, approached from a different corner.
There is no schedule. An essay goes up when it is done. The date on each one is a month, not a day, because I do not think it matters which Tuesday I finished something and pretending it does is its own small hurry.
The essays, newest first
- The nine-minute kettle
- Against the optimised morning
- One shelf of books
- A year of mending instead of replacing
- The long way round
- Letters to nobody
- What the allotment taught me about hurry
- A Sunday with no plan
Where to start
If you have ten minutes, read The long way round. If you are here because someone sent you a link about morning routines and you are feeling defensive, read Against the optimised morning instead, which is the argument in full and is not really about mornings.
The colophon explains how the site is made and why it looks like this, for the two people a year who ask.