Hi Everyone!
My name is Anne, and I’m the writer of this little blog. I am a mom of 2 under 2, and my messy buns show it! Me, my husband, and our two littles live in Texas, but one day we hope overseas (again). I’m sassy, sarcastic, and I’d like to believe kind. People are my passion, and my favorite thing is to listen to people talk about something that interests them!
My Story
My husband and I spent the first year of our marriage (2020, an interesting year to start anything) living in Central Asia. We were initially going as tourists but found ourselves with the longest running tourist visa because the borders closed around us. When faced with being literally trapped in a foreign country not knowing more than 10ish people, we had to learn some new skills. I remember one of my first thoughts being: “why didn’t I learn how to can fruit when I had a good internet connection?!”
This probably won’t be your experience (if it is, PLEASE send me an email so we can both feel less alone), but the lessons I learned I believe are applicable to just about anybody!
My Addiction to Instant Gratification
This is where I started to notice how dependent we were on instant gratification. I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown every time I discovered another thing that we “needed” that I couldn’t find (Tylenol, good coffee, mammograms, ranch?!). I had nightmares where someone handed me a grocery cart and set me loose in a Walmart and I had to remember everything that I needed. It grew to the point that when we were finally flying home (after 3 failed attempts at booking a ticket) we were on the plane, in the air, and my husband said “we’re leaving” and I legitimately responded with “I’ll believe it when we are out of this county’s airspace”. I had be so completely broken by the disappointment that that chapter had brought to us.
Flash forward to my first trip to Target back in the States, and I just stood there. I had envisioned filling my cart with everything that I had needed. I walked past the bulk Tylenol bottles. There were whole shelves. I walked past the meat, it was so clean (I’m not sure how to describe it, but meat in most other countries is packaged…bloodier). But I didn’t NEED it. We had enough Tylenol, the plastic bins I had been dreaming about I didn’t need because I didn’t need to keep things dry. Most of my frantic dreams had been just that, dreams. After almost a year without being able to have instant gratification, even amid complete turmoil (both globally and internally), I had changed.
Then time passed.
I took some time to separate what feelings from my time overseas were useful, and what feelings could be left behind. I started to decide what kind of life I want to live.
My father died suddenly of Covid in 2021. That taught me that what was important to me was people.
I became pregnant with my first daughter a few short months later. I learned that one of the most brave things that you can do is open your heart to another person.
She was a preemie, so during the pandemic and the whooping cough surge, her underdeveloped lungs meant we were stuck inside for the second half of 2022. Staying home with her changed me in a deeper way. I learned that I wanted to spend the time that I have staying home with her.
Okay, so by now you MUST be asking…
How on Earth did this lead me to want to blog about slow living??
I’m glad you (maybe) asked!
The natural response to realizing that time is short is, of course, to speed up. At least it was for me. Initially.
In the Western culture we live in, we want to squeeze every drop of life we have out of our experience (YOLO, you know?). But why? What do we gain from shuffling our kids to 7 different activities, cramming work into every free space we have, cooking and cleaning for hours on end, and building up stress as we think about the day or week or month ahead? Nothing! Beyond that, we rob ourselves of the ability to be content, because contentment comes from being focused on what you do have, not what you don’t.
I am a Christian, so I believe that this life is not all that we have, which differentiates me from your average slow living, meditating, yoga-doing, mindfulness-practicing blogger. I’m not saying that some of those things aren’t fantastic (I myself have a very tight lower back, so you can catch me folding myself into a pretzel as often as I can), but that’s not all. I believe that what we do in this life, the people that we have in our lives are incredibly important, and making space for living life, loving people, and truly having the conversations that matter is SO important.
What we choose to spend our time doing is important. I believe that in a busy world, we cannot always avoid instant gratification (and there are times when we shouldn’t want to). I believe that being mindful of where we put our time and energy is essential. But there are ways to abide where we are, using things as tools and not the be-all-end-all of our happiness.
That’s essentially what slow living is about.
You don’t give up on the important things. I PROMISE there is a way to live slowly while checking things off of your to-do list. What changes is the way you treat your tasks.
When you go to make dinner, you may make something that takes a longer time. But, if you spend that process teaching your child how to cook, that’s not a wasted moment, it’s now a memory. If you are making a choice at the supermarket between easy and fast or healthy and slow, I hope that 70% of the time I can convince you to choose the second option. Because your life has purpose, and so do you!
I hope that this space will encourage you to start living slow, whether it be in small ways or big! At the very least, I hope that you will indulge your curiosity a bit! This is how I’m trying to live, and it may not be for everyone, but it makes me happy, so I’d love to share that joy with you!
To learn more about slow living as a concept, click here.
To learn more about the history of slow living, click here.
THAT’S GREAT, BUT WHAT’S WITH THE NAME?!
My husband and I moved exactly 11 times during our first year of marriage, if you only count places we lived for more than 2 weeks. Having a home base is very important to me. I remember being on some flight going somewhere and saying to him “You know what would make me so happy? To have a mug with a handle. I can’t get one now because I would always worry that it would break when we move, but one day, I’m going to get a mug with a handle.”
Now I have many mugs with many handles, but they always still make me happy, and they make me feel like I have a place I can relax. A place to be home.
So have fun, explore the blog, and don’t hesitate to say “hi!”